AI Agents in Practice

Part 1

Foundations of AI Workflows and the Rise of AI Agents

In Part 1 of this book, we explore the evolution of AI development since the rise of large language models (LLMs) in late 2022, leading up to the emergence of AI agents as a new architectural paradigm.

This part begins by tracing how AI workflows have shifted—from simple API calls to more dynamic systems such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)—and highlights key technical breakthroughs such as fine-tuning, model distillation, and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). It introduces the concept of agentic behavior as the next frontier in building intelligent, goal-driven systems.

We then dive into what makes an AI agent: how it differs from traditional automation, the ...