/ai
course/building-agents
Building AI Agents
Agents with tools, a browser, skills, memory and sub-agents.
Tools: a paid subscription to a leading AI assistant is recommended (plans from about $100 a month).
[ in short ]
An AI agent is software that is given a goal and a set of tools and works out the steps itself: it reads, looks things up, fills in forms or calls other systems, and reports what it did. EBOXLAB AI builds agents for businesses with guardrails from day one: limited permissions, a person approving sensitive actions, and a log of every step. When we hand an agent over, it is yours.
01An AI agent, in plain words
It helps to compare three things that are all called AI:
- A chatbot answers questions. It does not act.
- A workflow follows fixed steps someone designed. It acts, but it cannot change the plan.
- An agent has a goal and tools, such as a browser, a database, email, your CRM or a memory of earlier work, and decides the next step itself, within limits you set. Larger jobs can be split between several agents, each with its own role.
That freedom is what makes agents useful, and also why they need guardrails.
02Where an agent pays off
Agents earn their keep on multi-step work that varies from case to case:
- Research: collect information from several sources and write a summary with links.
- Monitoring: watch prices, markets, listings or websites and report what changed.
- Triage: read incoming requests, look up the customer and prepare the right next step.
- Back office: tasks that span several systems, such as preparing one document from three sources.
- Infrastructure: routine tasks on your servers, carried out when you ask by message or by voice.
If the steps never change, a plain workflow is cheaper and more predictable, and we will recommend that instead. See AI automation.
03Guardrails we build in
- Least privilege. The agent can only touch the systems and actions its job needs.
- A person in the loop. Payments, messages to clients, deletions and other sensitive actions wait for approval.
- A log of every step. What it read, what it decided, what it did. Our forensics background shows here: the log is built to be evidence, not an afterthought.
- Spending and time limits, so a stuck agent cannot run up a bill.
- Tests and quality checks before launch and after every change.
- A way to stop it, in the hands of the people responsible.
[ service · ai agents ]
AI agent development
Agents for one clear job, with guardrails and a proper hand-over.
- A focused pilot, typically a few weeks
- Least privilege and human approval
- A log of every step
- Code, prompts and docs in your accounts
04Voice agents
A voice agent is an agent on the phone line. It answers calls, handles routine questions, keeps a log of each call, updates your CRM, and passes the call to a person when it should.
05How we build and hand over
We start with a short assessment, then build a pilot agent for one job, which typically takes a few weeks. Once it works on real cases, we scope the full build. At hand-over you get the code, prompts and documentation in your own accounts, your team is trained on how the agent works and how to change it, and support and monitoring are available after launch. The agent can run in the cloud, on your own servers or offline.
06Build agents yourself
If you would rather build agents in-house, two one-to-one courses cover it: Building AI Agents at Level 2, and Multi-Agent Systems at Level 3.
course/multi-agent
Multi-Agent Systems
Orchestration, tests and quality checks, cost control, running 24/7 in the cloud.
Tools: a paid subscription to a leading AI assistant is recommended (plans from about $100 a month).
[ next step ]
One job, one agent, first.
Tell us the task you would hand to an agent. We reply by email.
07Questions about AI agents
q01What is the difference between an AI agent and a chatbot?
A chatbot answers questions. An agent has a goal and tools, and takes actions to reach the goal, such as looking up records, filling in forms or calling other systems, within limits you set.
q02Is it safe to let an AI agent act in our systems?
It can be, with guardrails: limited permissions, a person approving sensitive actions, a log of every step, spending limits and a way to stop it. We build these in from the first version.
q03Can an AI agent run on our own servers?
Yes. Agents can run in your cloud account, on your own servers, or on a network with no internet connection.
q04How long does it take to build an AI agent?
A pilot agent for one job typically takes a few weeks. Larger systems are scoped after the pilot.
q05Can our own staff learn to build agents?
Yes. Building AI Agents is a Level 2 course ($1,290, 6 weekly 1:1 sessions), and Multi-Agent Systems is a Level 3 course ($2,490, 8 weekly 1:1 sessions).