Agent Engineer

A free course for software engineers on AI agents. Learn the fundamentals, build with real tools, and ship to production.

19 lessons 3 parts No AI/ML experience required
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Fundamentals Building & Shipping Deep Dives

Part 1: Fundamentals

01

What are AI agents?

The big picture - what agents are, why they matter, and when to use them.

02

How agents think

LLMs as the reasoning engine - how models plan, decide, and generate.

03

Tools - giving agents hands

Function calling, tool design, and connecting agents to the real world.

04

Agentic design patterns

ReAct, reflection, planning, and other core patterns.

05

Memory and context

How agents remember things - sessions, context windows, and long-term memory.

06

Planning and reasoning

How agents break down complex tasks and make decisions.

07

Multi-agent systems

When one agent isn't enough - coordination, delegation, and teamwork.

08

Agentic RAG

Going beyond basic retrieval - agents that search, evaluate, and refine.

09

Evaluating and testing agents

How to know if your agent actually works - metrics, evals, and observability.

10

Guardrails and safety

Keeping agents trustworthy - security, alignment, and responsible AI.

Part 2: Building & Shipping

11

From prototype to production

The journey from demo to deployed - CI/CD, rollout, and operations.

12

Getting started with Vertex AI and ADK

The Google Cloud AI stack for agents - what's available and how it fits together.

13

Building your first agent

Hands-on - build a working agent with ADK step by step.

14

Agent protocols - MCP and A2A

How agents talk to tools and to each other using open standards.

Part 3: Deep Dives

15

AGENTS.md

Giving AI coding agents context about your project with a standard config file.

16

MCP deep dive

How MCP works under the hood, MCP vs. CLI tools, and security considerations.

17

Agent skills

Packaging reusable domain expertise as portable skill modules.

18

Orchestrators

Managing agent control flow - patterns, frameworks, and best practices.

19

Where to go from here

Resources, codelabs, community, and next steps.

How to use this course

Philosophy