AI Agents for Beginners: Plan Your First Agent
AI agents in plain words: how they work, when to use one, what can go wrong. Then plan one for your own job, no code. 8 lessons, first 2 lessons free.
The word “agent” is on a lot of AI products. Some of them plan, act and check their own work; others are a chatbot or a fixed automation with a new label. Gartner calls that relabelling “agent washing”, Reuters reported in June 2025. This course gives you a plain test for telling them apart, and shows you how a real agent works: it works toward a goal, chooses its next step and tool, checks the result, and stops or hands back to you when it is done or stuck.
You run that loop yourself, in an ordinary chat, on a batch of your own work. You learn the parts every agent is built from, how agents reach your apps through connectors, skills and MCP, which of your tasks deserve an agent and which don’t, and what went wrong in documented cases. Then you check what ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot (formerly Microsoft 365 Copilot) offer on your own plan.
You finish with an Agent Card: a one-page plan for one agent that does a real task of yours, with its risks, its approvals and the tool it will run in. The rest of the path builds that agent from the card. No code, nothing to install. Lessons 1 and 2 are free.
What You'll Learn
- Explain how a chatbot, an assistant, a workflow and an agent differ, using the vendors' own definitions
- Apply the agent loop (goal, plan, act, check, stop or hand back) to a batch of your own work in an ordinary chat
- Identify the parts of an agent and explain how it reaches your apps through connectors, skills and MCP
- Evaluate whether a task suits an agent, a fixed automation, a plain prompt or a person
- Apply three safeguards (a narrow task, only the access it needs, approval on actions you can't undo) to a delegation
- Design an Agent Card for one real task, with its risks, approvals and the tool and plan it will run in
After This Course, You Can
What You'll Build
Course Syllabus
Prerequisites
- An account with ChatGPT, Claude or Microsoft Copilot: a free plan is enough for every exercise
- One repetitive task from your own work that you would like to hand off
Who Is This For?
- Professionals who chat with ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot and keep hearing about agents
- Managers deciding whether an agent is worth trying on their team's work
- Anyone who wants to plan a safe, useful agent before building one, without code
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to know how to code?
No. Every exercise is a prompt you paste into an ordinary chat in ChatGPT, Claude or Microsoft Copilot. Nothing is installed or connected in this course; two lessons ask you to look through your own tool's menus, without changing anything.
Which AI tools does it cover?
ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. A free ChatGPT or Claude account, or Copilot Chat, works for every exercise. To build an agent in Copilot later, you need a work or school Microsoft account: Microsoft documents agent building for those accounts, and we found no Microsoft page that documents it for personal accounts.
Will I build an agent in this course?
You plan one. You finish with an Agent Card: a one-page plan for an agent that does one real task of yours, with its steps, the apps it reads or changes, its risks, the approvals it needs and the tool and plan it will run in. The next course in the path builds it from that card.
Is this course free?
Lessons 1 and 2 are free with a free account. The rest of the course and the certificate come with Pro.
Will I get a certificate?
Yes, with Pro: finish every lesson and score at least 70% on the quizzes for a verifiable certificate.
How long does it take?
Eight lessons; the course page shows the total time. Each lesson ends with one piece of your Agent Card.
