Building AI Agents with OpenAI APIs Training Course

Foundations of AI Agents and OpenAI APIs

• Defining what an AI agent is and how it distinguishes itself from a standard chatbot.
• Common business applications for assistants and workflow agents.
• Key concepts of the OpenAI API, including request and response structures.
• Planning a straightforward agent workflow for a specific business task.

Setting Up the Development Environment

• Preparing API access, managing credentials, and configuring the local environment.
• Selecting between Python or JavaScript for implementation.
• Executing an initial API request and analyzing the output.
• Understanding fundamental request parameters and structured outputs.

Prompting and Instruction Design

• Crafting clear instructions to guide agent behavior.
• Structuring prompts to ensure reliable and useful responses.
• Utilizing examples, constraints, and specific output formats.
• Identifying and avoiding common pitfalls in prompt design.

Tool Integration and Multi-Step Workflows

• Introduction to tool usage and function calling patterns.
• Defining simple tools for business tasks and data retrieval.
• Transmitting structured data between the model and external tools.
• Orchestrating a basic multi-step agent workflow.

Managing Context, Reliability, and Safety

• Handling multi-turn conversations and maintaining session state.
• Ensuring responses remain focused, consistent, and aligned with tasks.
• Implementing basic guardrails, moderation techniques, and fallback strategies.
• Monitoring token consumption, costs, and identifying common failure points.

Constructing and Reviewing a Simple Business Agent

• Building a small-scale, end-to-end agent for a realistic business scenario.
• Integrating prompts, tools, and workflow logic.
• Testing the agent with sample cases and refining its design.
• Summarizing key learnings and outlining next steps for production deployment.