Building Your First AI Agent

Agents extend LLMs with the ability to take actions — search the web, call APIs, run code, and more.

Architecture

A basic agent loop:

1. Receive user input
2. Decide which tool to use (if any)
3. Execute the tool
4. Feed results back to the model
5. Repeat until done

Tool design

Keep tools focused and well-documented. The model reads tool descriptions to decide when to use them.

def search_docs(query: str) -> str:
    """Search internal documentation for relevant pages."""
    return doc_store.search(query)

Common pitfalls

• Too many tools confuse the model
• Missing error handling leads to infinite loops
• No observability makes debugging painful

Start simple. Add complexity only when needed.