AI That Takes Action

1. Ch 1

   Why the Agent Demo Lies

   Nothing gets a project greenlit like watching an AI agent resolve a ticket end to end, by itself. Nothing predicts a painful launch like trusting…

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2. Ch 2

   What a Healthy Agent Setup Looks Like

   You don't need to build the loop — but you should recognize a well-run one. It has parts, guardrails, and instruments, and a team that can't point…

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3. Ch 3

   When You Actually Need an Agent

   "Agent" is the word of the moment, so teams reach for one everywhere. But an agent is the right tool only when the work genuinely needs a loop.…

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4. Ch 4

   Tools Are the Agent's Hands

   An agent can only do what its tools let it do. The design of those tools — how many, how clear, how safe — drives reliability more than the model…

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5. Ch 5

   Knowing When to Stop

   The failure that surprises leaders most isn't a wrong answer — it's an agent that never finishes: circling, re-trying, burning time and money on a…

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6. Ch 6

   Why It Costs What It Costs

   Two agents doing the same job can cost wildly different amounts, and the driver is usually invisible on a demo: how many steps each takes and how…

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7. Ch 7

   One Agent or Many?

   "Multi-agent system" sounds more sophisticated than "an agent," so teams reach for a team of agents by default. Usually that's a mistake — more…

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8. Ch 8

   Measuring Whether It Works

   You can't judge an agent by watching it once, because an agent isn't one output — it's a multi-step process with many ways to go right or wrong. The…

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9. Ch 9

   Permissions & the Irreversible Action

   The difference between an agent and a chatbot is that an agent does things — and some things can't be undone. The failure that ends up in an…

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10. Ch 10

    When It Meets the Real World

    An agent that passes your tests can still stumble in production, because the real world is messier than any test suite and things drift. Launch is…

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11. Ch 11

    Building an Agent Culture

    The teams that ship agents you can trust don't have a secret model — they have habits that keep an acting system honest: measured, traced, gated…

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12. Ch 12

    Build vs. Buy & Who to Hire

    You can buy an agent platform, build on your own stack, or blend the two — and all three are right for different companies. The mistake is deciding…

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13. Appendix

    Hiring an AI Agent Engineer

    Five questions to ask candidates, what a strong versus weak answer sounds like, and a one-page scorecard. You don't need to build the agent yourself…

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AI That Takes Action · AI Engineer Dojo · Other editions