Module 16 Lesson 5: Multi-Modal Agents
See and hear. Designing interfaces that allow agents to process images, diagrams, and voice commands.
See and hear. Designing interfaces that allow agents to process images, diagrams, and voice commands.
Hands-on: Design a dashboard concept for a multi-agent research crew that shows planning and status.
Dissecting the agent. Understanding the four pillars: LLM, Memory, Tools, and the Control Loop.
The snapshot of intelligence. Managing variables, message history, and flags within a running agent.
The two speeds of learning. Understanding conversation buffers vs vector databases.
The mechanics of action. How LLMs trigger external functions using structured JSON.
Self-correcting AI. How agents learn from errors and retry failed attempts during execution.
Hands-on: Build a manual, single-step agent loop from scratch in Python.
Mastering the fundamental agent loop. How to prompt for Thought, Action, and Observation.
Divide and conquer. Using one agent to build the map and another to walk the path.
The CEO of Agents. Coordinating multiple specialist agents to solve multi-disciplinary problems.
Self-improving AI. Using one model to generate and another to find the flaws.
The safety net. When and how to pause an autonomous agent to ask for human approval.
Hands-on: Design a planner-executor flow for a multi-step research task.
The framework of choice. Understanding the high-level Agent abstractions in LangChain.
Equipping your agent. How to define tools using decorators, pydantic, and base classes.
The heartbeat of LangChain agents. Managing the while-loop and handling the ReAct cycle.
Connecting the threads. How to implement chat history and windowed memory in LangChain agents.
Why agents break. Understanding hallucinations, tool loops, and parsing errors in LangChain.
Protecting your wallet. Setting limits on iterations, time, and tokens in LangChain agent executors.
Hands-on: Build a tool-using LangChain agent and observe the reasoning traces in real-time.
The AI feedback trap. Why agents get stuck in repetitive cycles and how to break them.
When models get lazy. Understanding how agents take shortcuts or misuse tools to avoid difficult reasoning.
Ghost tools. How to handle agents that try to execute functions that don't exist in their toolbox.
The Black Box problem. Why traditional debuggers fail and how to use traces to find the glitch.
From magic to structure. Why giving an agent too much freedom is a recipes for disaster.
The successor to the Loop. Understanding the need for cyclic graphs in agent development.
Designing the flowchart of intelligence. Understanding nodes, edges, and state transitions.
The building blocks of LangGraph. Learning how to write functions that play nice with the graph schema.
Stability in the graph. Using edges and state counters to prevent infinite loops and ensure predictable behavior.
Managing the perimeter. Using specialized nodes to filter inputs and validate final results.
Hands-on: Convert a simple LangChain AgentExecutor into a controlled LangGraph workflow.
The logic of the graph. Mastering how to route control based on tool calls, state variables, and LLM output.
Setting boundaries. How to implement hard limits on cycles and token usage within your agent graphs.
Resilience by design. How to handle tool failures and rate limits within the agent graph.
The zero-trust agent. How to implement verification steps that ensure output quality before finishing.
The pause button. Implementing 'interrupts' that allow humans to review and edit agent state before final actions.
Hands-on: Build a complex research agent with routing, loop guards, and a validation gate.
From single actors to ensemble casts. Understanding the specialized role-playing framework for multi-agent systems.
Designing the persona. How to write effective Roles, Goals, and Backstories to maximize agent performance.
Breaking it down. How to turn a complex project into a set of discrete, delegated Tasks in CrewAI.
Sequential vs. Hierarchical. Choosing the right organizational structure for your agent team.
How agents share data. Understanding context passing, memory sharing, and the 'Kitchen' environment in CrewAI.
Hands-on: Build a two-agent research crew that identifies tech trends and writes a report.
The lightweight alternative. Understanding the event-driven, streaming-first architecture of StrandAgents.
Reacting in real-time. How to design agents that trigger actions based on external signals rather than internal loops.
Choosing your memory model. When to build agents that remember the past vs agents that treat every event as new.
Zero latency. Understanding how to build agents that speak while they think using async Python and SSE.
Choosing the right tool. Understanding when to use event-driven strands over complex graphs or crews.
Hands-on: Build an event-driven agent pipeline that detects toxicity and triggers a response.