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AI Agents Textbook

A free, self-paced textbook in 8 chapters. Read a chapter, then drill it with the 500 companion flashcards using spaced repetition.

8 chapters · 500 cards · Updated

Chapters

  1. 1Foundations of AI Agents

    An AI agent is an autonomous software system that perceives its environment, reasons about goals, and takes actions without continuous human intervention. Unlike a simple chatbot t...

  2. 2Reasoning, Planning, and Tool Use

    Modern LLM-based agents extend their capabilities far beyond text generation through tool use — the ability to invoke external tools such as APIs, code interpreters, databases, and...

  3. 3Agent Memory and Knowledge

    AI agents require memory to maintain context across interactions, learn from past experiences, recall user preferences, and avoid repeating mistakes. Memory is generally classified...

  4. 4Multi-Agent Systems and Inter-Agent Protocols

    When a single agent becomes insufficient for complex tasks, multi-agent architectures distribute responsibilities across multiple specialized agents. Several coordination patterns...

  5. 5Frameworks for Building Agents

    A rich ecosystem of frameworks supports agent development. LangGraph, from the LangChain team, builds stateful multi-step agent workflows as directed graphs with nodes representing...

  6. 6GitHub Copilot and AI Coding Tools

    GitHub Copilot has evolved from inline code completion into a comprehensive agentic coding platform. The foundation is Copilot code completion, which provides real-time ghost text...

  7. 7Safety, Alignment, and Security

    As agents gain autonomy and tool access, safety becomes paramount. Guardrailing implements safety checks, input and output filters, and constraints to prevent agents from taking ha...

  8. 8Evaluation, Benchmarking, and Production Operations

    Systematic evaluation is essential to building reliable agents. Standardized benchmarks include SWE-bench, which evaluates agents on resolving real GitHub issues from popular Pytho...

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