welcome
Thank you for purchasing the MEAP for the second edition of AI Agents in Action, Second Edition. Because the AI agent landscape has changed so quickly this edition entirely replaces seven chapters from the first edition and updates the remaining with new content, techniques and tips for building agents.
While you don’t have to be a strong Python developer to enjoy the content in this book, some familiarity will certainly help. You will also need access to an OpenAI API subscription to work through the examples in the book. This will require purchasing LLM usage but expect not to spend more than 20 dollars USD.
Since my AI agent journey began in 2023, I have been looking at productizing and commercializing agents for enterprise applications. During this time, I have gathered a breadth of knowledge that filled the first edition and has since been further updated in the second edition with more formal practical techniques and tips for building real-world agentic systems.
A lot has changed with our understanding of agents and agentic systems. We have gone from the single agent helper to now building full autonomous agentic workflows that enlist multiple types of agents all working together. For this reason, this book focuses on exploring single and multiple agent patterns from many practical use cases including retrieval augmented generation, customer support and deep research agentic systems.