AI Agents 101
Chatbots answer questions. Agents do things — search the web, call tools, remember context, and work through multi-step tasks. This course demystifies how agents work under the hood and walks you through building your first real one, no PhD required.
🎬 Watch: course introduction
What this course is, who it's for, and how to get the most out of it — about 2 minutes.
What you'll work through
Click a module to see its lessons. Lessons open in the learning platform — a free account is required.
Module 1 — From chatbots to agents
- What makes an agent an agent: autonomy, tools, and goals 17 min read
- The agent loop: perceive, reason, act, repeat 17 min read
- Where agents shine — and where they flop 17 min read
Module 2 — Tools: giving agents hands
- How tool calling works under the hood 17 min read
- Designing good tools: narrow, named, and documented 17 min read
- Safety basics: what an agent should never be allowed to do 17 min read
Module 3 — Memory and context
- Short-term memory: conversation history and context windows 17 min read
- Long-term memory: notes, files, and vector stores 17 min read
- Retrieval: letting agents look things up 17 min read
Module 4 — Build 1: your research agent
- Planning the build: goal, tools, and success criteria 17 min read
- Wiring search and summarization tools 17 min read
- The reasoning loop in action 17 min read
- Testing and hardening your agent 17 min read
Module 5 — Build 2: a personal task agent
- Designing an agent around your own workflow 17 min read
- Build 2: multi-step task automation 17 min read
- Next steps: multi-agent systems and production 17 min read
What you'll be able to do
Prerequisites
Prompt Engineering Basics recommended (or equivalent comfort with AI chat tools). Basic computer confidence helps; no programming background required for the concepts, though the builds include optional code walkthroughs.
Instructor
Instructor bio coming soon — written by the course author.
Build your first agent.
Lessons open soon — the course is in final production.
Resources
Free downloads that go with this course.
The cheat sheet is a dense reference distilled from the course lessons. The starter project is a skeleton with TODOs that map to course sections — a starting point, not a finished product.