Building AI Agents with smolagents

What you’ll learn:

• Build AI agents that interact with external systems and tools
• Understand the architecture of modern AI agent systems
• Implement single agents and multi-agent collaboration patterns
• Create custom tools for your AI agents
• Add user interfaces with GradioUI
• Deploy agents to Hugging Face Spaces
• Set up monitoring with OpenTelemetry and LangFuse

Course Description:

Move beyond basic chatbots and build AI systems that take real actions in the world.

This course takes you from AI agent theory to implementation using the smolagents framework. You’ll learn to build systems that search the web, process data, execute code, and collaborate with other agents.

We begin with theory, explaining the differences between traditional LLMs and AI agents, agent architecture, and when to use workflows versus agents. You’ll understand the spectrum from developer-controlled flows to autonomous agents.

Then we dive into hands-on development. You’ll build your first agent, create custom tools, implement user interfaces, and deploy to Hugging Face Spaces. The course concludes with multi-agent systems and monitoring techniques.

By the end, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to design, build, and deploy AI agent systems for various applications.

Requirements:

• Basic Python programming knowledge
• Familiarity with LLM concepts
• No prior experience with AI agents required

Who this course is for:

• Software developers adding AI capabilities to applications
• Machine learning engineers expanding beyond traditional models
• AI enthusiasts building interactive systems
• Professionals automating complex workflows
• Students and researchers exploring AI applications