Patrick Baumgartner is a Java Champion, passionate software crafter, and technical agile coach at 42talents. He helps teams build elegant, simple, and robust solutions, specializing in cloud software with Java, the Spring ecosystem, and other open-source technologies.

Patrick is an active member of the Software Craft, Java, and Agile communities in Switzerland. As a trainer and coach, he focuses on making a real impact by sharing knowledge, experimenting, and fostering continuous improvement. He enjoys learning with and from others.

LOCATION: Basel
ROOM: Markthalle Basel, Viaduktstrasse 12 4051 Basel, Room Mono, travel instructions
KEYWORDS: AI, Tools, Technology, Product

SPEAKER: Patrick Baumgartner   COMPANY: 42talents GmbH

Large Language Models enable powerful new AI capabilities, but production-grade enterprise agents require more than prompting alone. Prompt chaining often results in non-deterministic behavior, limited traceability, and systems that are difficult to control and test.

This talk introduces Embabel, an open source agent framework for the JVM created by Rod Johnson, founder of the Spring Framework. Embabel enables controllable, explainable, and production-ready agentic systems directly within existing Java and Spring applications.

Rather than orchestrating behavior through prompts, Embabel applies Goal-Oriented Action Planning (GOAP). Agents are composed of strongly typed actions, goals, and domain models, allowing execution paths to be dynamically replanned when assumptions change or steps fail. The result is agent behavior that remains explainable, deterministic, and testable.

The talk demonstrates why LLM-driven orchestration often breaks down in enterprise environments and how teams can build robust, maintainable, and controllable AI agents without introducing a new tech stack, relying on fragile prompt logic, or sacrificing architectural control.

LANGUAGE: Talk: en / Slides: en

Patrick Baumgartner is a Java Champion, passionate software crafter, and technical agile coach at 42talents. He helps teams build elegant, simple, and robust solutions, specializing in cloud software with Java, the Spring ecosystem, and other open-source technologies.

Patrick is an active member of the Software Craft, Java, and Agile communities in Switzerland. As a trainer and coach, he focuses on making a real impact by sharing knowledge, experimenting, and fostering continuous improvement. He enjoys learning with and from others.

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