Foundations of AI Agents

Ready to move beyond basic chatbots and explore the future of artificial intelligence? AI agents represent the next step: autonomous systems capable of reasoning, planning, and taking action to achieve goals. This course provides a clear, foundational understanding of how they work. By the end of this course, you will be equipped to design and conceptualize your own agents that can interact with tools and information to complete complex tasks. You'll move from theory to practical application, building a solid base for creating more advanced agentic workflows. What you'll learn: - Understand the core components of an AI agent, including planning, memory, and tool use. - Learn key agent architectures like the ReAct (Reason+Act) framework for building reliable systems. - Practice prompt engineering specifically for agentic workflows to guide autonomous behavior. - Explore Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to provide agents with access to external knowledge. - Apply your knowledge by outlining the structure for simple agents that can perform tasks like web research or data summarization. - Grasp the fundamentals of evaluating agent performance to measure task success and identify areas for improvement. The course begins with essential terminology and the fundamental concepts that define AI agents. You'll then progress through key architectural patterns and practical, text-based exercises to solidify your understanding. This course is designed for complete beginners. No prior experience with AI agents or advanced machine learning is required, just a curiosity to learn. Start your journey into the world of agentic AI today.