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299 students
AI Agents and Automation
Build intelligent AI agents, automate workflows, connect tools, and design reliable agentic systems for real-world tasks
Created bySchool of AI, Arjun Vaid
Last updated 8/2026
English
English [Auto],
What you'll learn
- Explain what AI agents are and how they differ from traditional chatbots, scripts, and automation tools.
- Understand the core components of an AI agent, including goals, instructions, tools, actions, planning, and memory.
- Identify when to use single-agent, multi-agent, and orchestrated agent architectures.
- Design agent workflows that break complex goals into smaller, manageable tasks.
- Understand how AI agents select and call external tools, APIs, databases, and business applications.
- Create workflows for automating repetitive, rule-based, and knowledge-intensive tasks.
- Design trigger-based automations that respond to events, schedules, user requests, or changing data.
- Apply orchestration patterns to coordinate multiple specialized agents.
- Build structured workflows for research, customer support, operations, reporting, and business productivity.
- Add planning and memory capabilities to improve agent continuity and task completion.
- Design error-handling, validation, retry, and recovery mechanisms for more reliable agentic systems.
- Evaluate where human approval and oversight should be included in automated workflows.
- Identify limitations and risks involving inaccurate outputs, tool failures, security, privacy, and uncontrolled actions.
- Develop practical blueprints for deploying AI agents within personal, team, and organizational workflows.
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Course content
5 sections • 15 lectures • 1h 27m total length
Requirements
- No previous experience building AI agents is required.
- Basic familiarity with generative AI tools such as ChatGPT is helpful but not mandatory.
- The course is suitable for beginners, business professionals, and technical learners.
- A computer with an internet connection is recommended.
- Access to a generative AI assistant is useful for practicing course exercises.
- Basic understanding of workplace processes, digital tools, or repetitive tasks will be helpful.
- No advanced mathematics, machine learning, or data science background is required.
- Programming knowledge is optional and is not required to understand the main concepts.
- Learners should be willing to map workflows, experiment with AI tools, and review automated results.
- Curiosity about automation, productivity, and intelligent systems is the most important prerequisite.
Description
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
AI Agents and Automation is a practical, beginner-friendly course designed to help you understand how intelligent agents can plan tasks, use tools, automate workflows, and complete real-world business activities. As organizations move beyond basic chatbots, agentic AI is becoming an important approach for building systems that can take actions, coordinate tasks, and interact with external applications.
You will begin by learning what AI agents are and how they differ from traditional software automation and conversational AI assistants. You will explore the essential components of an agent, including goals, instructions, planning, tools, actions, and memory. These foundations will help you understand how an AI system can move from generating an answer to completing a multi-step task.
The course then introduces common AI agent architectures. You will compare single-agent systems, multi-agent systems, and orchestration patterns. You will learn how specialized agents can work together, share responsibilities, and coordinate through a central orchestrator. You will also examine when a simple workflow is more appropriate than a complex multi-agent design.
In the workflow automation section, you will explore how AI automation can reduce repetitive work and improve productivity. Examples include processing information, creating reports, responding to requests, organizing data, preparing summaries, and coordinating routine business processes. You will also learn how trigger-based workflows can begin from schedules, incoming messages, application events, or changes in data.
The course explains how to connect agents with external tools, APIs, databases, search systems, communication platforms, and enterprise applications. You will learn the fundamentals of tool calling and understand how agents select the appropriate action based on the task. You will also see why permissions, validation, and human approval are critical when an AI system is allowed to take action.
When building agentic systems, reliability is just as important as intelligence. You will learn how to decompose complex tasks, define clear workflow stages, validate intermediate results, handle errors, retry failed actions, and recover from unexpected outcomes. These techniques help reduce failures and create systems that are easier to monitor and improve.
Real-world examples include AI research agents, customer-support agents, operational assistants, reporting agents, and business-process automation. Each use case demonstrates how agent concepts can be applied to practical workplace challenges.
By the end of the course, you will understand the foundations of AI agents, multi-agent systems, workflow automation, tool calling, and agent orchestration. You will be prepared to identify valuable automation opportunities, design agent workflows, evaluate risks, and create reliable blueprints for intelligent systems that support individuals, teams, and organizations.
Who this course is for:
- Professionals who want to understand how AI agents can automate everyday workplace tasks.
- Beginners seeking a practical introduction to agentic AI without advanced technical requirements.
- Business analysts, consultants, product managers, and project managers exploring AI automation.
- Entrepreneurs and small-business owners looking to streamline operations and reduce repetitive work.
- Developers and technical professionals who want to understand agent architectures and orchestration patterns.
- Operations, customer support, marketing, sales, finance, and human resources professionals.
- Automation specialists interested in combining generative AI with workflows and external tools.
- Managers and team leaders evaluating AI agent opportunities for their organizations.
- Students and career changers who want to develop skills in AI agents and intelligent automation.
- Anyone interested in research agents, support agents, workflow automation, or multi-agent systems.