Build an AI Agent (From Scratch)

Overview

A book that guides readers through building a working AI agent from scratch, covering reasoning, planning, and multi-step task execution using the ReAct pattern and modern protocols such as MCP and A2A. It provides step-by-step explanations for creating custom assistants with tool use and knowledge retrieval.

Best for

Best for
Developers and engineers who want to deeply understand and build their own custom AI agents

Use cases

• Learning to implement the ReAct (Thought-Action-Observation) pattern for agent reasoning
• Building a custom AI agent that can interact with external tools and APIs
• Understanding how to integrate agent communication protocols like MCP and A2A

Notes

A book that guides readers through building a working AI agent from scratch, covering reasoning, planning, and multi-step task execution using the ReAct pattern and modern protocols such as MCP and A2A. It provides step-by-step explanations for creating custom assistants with tool use and knowledge retrieval.

Use cases

• Learning to implement the ReAct (Thought-Action-Observation) pattern for agent reasoning
• Building a custom AI agent that can interact with external tools and APIs
• Understanding how to integrate agent communication protocols like MCP and A2A

Pros

• Detailed, step-by-step guidance for building agents from the ground up
• Covers modern, practical protocols (MCP, A2A) used in real-world agent systems
• Clear explanations suitable for developers with some AI or Python experience

Cons

• Requires existing programming knowledge and familiarity with AI concepts
• Focuses on building from scratch, not a pre-built or hosted solution
• May lack coverage of production deployment or scaling considerations

Indexed from awesome-generative-ai and enriched against its public facts.