Building AI Agents with Google Cloud and Vertex AI

Organizations are increasingly turning to intelligent agents to automate complex tasks, improve customer support, and streamline operations. This text-based course guides you through the foundational concepts of AI agents on Google Cloud, helping you understand how to leverage these powerful tools for real-world applications. By reading through our structured explanations and analyzing practical code examples, you will gain a clear understanding of how to architect, build, and deploy conversational and task-oriented agents. You will transition from learning basic terminology to understanding how agents interact with external APIs and data sources. What you'll learn: - Understand the core architecture and terminology of AI agents and conversational platforms - Configure agent behaviors, intents, and flows within the Vertex AI ecosystem - Apply Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) patterns to ground agent responses in reliable data - Design effective system prompts and instructions to guide agent decision-making - Integrate agents with external APIs and tools to perform automated actions - Monitor and evaluate agent performance using cloud-native observability practices The course begins with a thorough introduction to agentic workflows and fundamental cloud AI concepts. From there, you will explore step-by-step written guides on configuring agents, connecting them to secure data sources, and managing their lifecycle in production. This course is designed for beginners, developers, and cloud enthusiasts who want to understand AI agent technology from the ground up, with no prior machine learning experience required. Start reading today to build your foundation in cloud-based AI agents.