A Building Agentic AI

Blog / Beginner

Cluster archive

Beginner posts

Posts for software people new to AI. What agents are, the agent loop, prompting, RAG, tool calling, and the building blocks of agentic systems. Companion writing to Volume I, Understanding Agentic AI Systems.

8 posts Paired with Vol. I · Foundations → All posts →

  1. Jun 06 2026

    When to Use an Agent Framework vs Build It Yourself (LangGraph, CrewAI, and More)

    Build the raw loop yourself until you hit a specific named pain, then adopt a framework to solve it. A decision diagram and the frameworks worth knowing.

    · 31 min read

  2. May 26 2026

    Giving Your Agent Memory: A Minimal Implementation

    Memory is one word for four different problems your agent has. Conversation buffer, summarization, episodic recall and semantic retrieval, built from scratch.

    · 12 min read

  3. May 26 2026

    Tool Calling From First Principles (Before You Touch LangChain)

    Function calling, demystified. How a model actually calls a tool, a 40-line example with no framework, and the four things that go wrong in production.

    · 10 min read

  4. May 24 2026

    The Four Steps of the Agent Loop: Perceive, Decide, Act, Observe

    Perceive, decide, act, observe: the four steps of the agent loop, why some courses call the second step reason, and what breaks when each one fails.

    · 9 min read

  5. May 24 2026

    Build an AI Agent From Scratch in Python, No Framework

    Build a real AI agent in about 150 lines of Python with no framework. Just the agent loop, two tools, memory and bounded autonomy, explained line by line.

    · 12 min read

  6. May 23 2026

    What is agentic AI? A plain definition, and when not to use it

    Agentic AI in plain English: what it is, how it differs from a chatbot, one worked example, and the cases where it is the wrong tool for the job.

    · 6 min read

  7. May 20 2026

    Agentic AI Glossary: 40 Terms, Plainly Defined

    Forty core agentic AI terms in plain language, from the agent loop and tool calling to memory, guardrails and MCP. A reference you can scan or cite.

    · 10 min read

  8. May 11 2026

    Agentic Coding Is Real. Here is the Mental Model Every Leader, Engineer, and Recruiter Needs in 2026

    A vendor-neutral mental model of agentic coding: what changed, AGENTS.md, modes of autonomy, the MCP stack, and the principles that have held up.

    · 17 min read