Vanderbilt University

AI Agents and Agentic AI with Python & Generative AI

Vanderbilt University

AI Agents and Agentic AI with Python & Generative AI

Dr. Jules White

Instructor: Dr. Jules White

Top Instructor

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73,200 already enrolled

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.

417 reviews

Beginner level

Recommended experience

Flexible schedule
1 week at 10 hours a week
Learn at your own pace
88%
Most learners liked this course
Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.

417 reviews

Beginner level

Recommended experience

Flexible schedule
1 week at 10 hours a week
Learn at your own pace
88%
Most learners liked this course

What you'll learn

  • Build a complete AI agent framework in Python, creating each component yourself to gain deep understanding of how agents work

  • Design tool discovery systems and function calling mechanisms that allow your agents to interact with external systems and perform meaningful actions

  • Create practical, production-ready agents for tasks like intelligent file exploration, documentation generation, and coding

Details to know

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Assessments

3 assignments

Taught in English

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There are 5 modules in this course

In this module, you’ll learn the core concepts behind agentic AI—systems that can plan, act, and adapt based on feedback. You’ll explore patterns like flipped interaction, agent loops, and programmatic prompting, and see how memory and structured outputs enable agents to operate autonomously. Tip: Focus on how agents decide what to do next. That decision-making loop is the foundation of everything you’ll build later.

What's included

4 videos4 readings2 assignments9 plugins

This module introduces the core components of AI agents, focusing on how they use structured prompts, tools, and actions to interact with real-world systems. You’ll learn how to design effective agent prompts using the GAIL framework, define tools clearly, and build agent loops that use feedback to make decisions. The module also covers function calling and best practices for creating reliable, structured agent behaviors.

What's included

4 videos4 readings1 assignment4 plugins

This module introduces the GAME framework as a practical way to design AI agents before building them in code. You’ll explore how goals, actions, memory, and environment work together in an agent loop, how to simulate agent behavior in conversation, and how to translate the framework into modular, reusable Python code.

What's included

2 videos1 reading7 plugins

In this module, you’ll learn how to design, organize, and maintain tools that AI agents use to take action. You’ll explore how Python decorators can keep tool definitions and documentation in sync, how to organize tools using tags and registries, and how to simplify agent development through reusable, well-structured tool systems.

What's included

1 reading3 plugins

In this module, you’ll explore how AI agents are changing who can build software, how software is designed, and how information can be accessed and used. You’ll examine how simple tools plus agent intelligence can create powerful systems, and how capabilities like multimodal reasoning, flexible translation, and perspective generation open up new ways to solve problems. Tip: As you go through this module, focus less on “the right answer” and more on how AI agents expand what is possible in designing software and working with information.

What's included

4 videos1 plugin

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Instructor

Instructor ratings
(122 ratings)
Dr. Jules White

Top Instructor

Vanderbilt University
51 Courses1,137,102 learners

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