Principles of Building AI Agents

by Sam Bhagwat

Rapid advances in large language models (LLMs) have made new kinds of AI applications, known as agents, possible. Written by a veteran of web development, Principles of Building AI Agents focuses on the substance without hype or buzzwords. This book walks key building blocks of providers, models, prompts, tools, memoryHow to break down complex tasks with agentic workflowsGiving agents access to knowledge bases with RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)Agent observability with tracing and evals

Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Technology

118 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 23, 2025

Reviews

[Sabina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was all over LinkedIn, and I was intrigued, so I got my own copy.
The author writes about AI agents. These are systems that help you perceive and reason with text using large language models, for example.

It’s important to note that the book includes several code snippets, so you’ll need a basic understanding of JavaScript.

The book jumps straight into the how-tos of building, evaluating, and deploying AI agents, serving as both a primer and a guide.

It offers great advice for engineers ready to build without getting lost in buzzwords.

[Tomas Laurinavicius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and simple intro

Super short and simple introduction that may lack substance if you are looking for a comprehensive guide or more detailed explanation of AI terms like RAG, chunking, vector databases and so on. Nevertheless great read with some practical Mastra code examples.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good overview for vendor-ware. Will give you confidence about the scope of this agentic stuff, and demystify some terms.

Wishes for next edition:
- better code examples (and not too reliant on Mastra-specific work… yes they’re selling a tool here, but some usefulness is lost)
- more in-depth explanations—there’s a bunch of “rest of the owl” hand-waiving https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/57207...
- use of an AI editor to sort out myriad layout issues


All in all, well worth the price paid ($0) and time (~90 minutes). Nice work.

[Sean Tierney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic primer on the mechanics of building AI agents. I have a minimal tech background and my experience in this realm thus far has been with constructing agents via N8n but this book opened my eyes to Mastra for building agents via their framework. I like the authors style of explaining things holistically and agnostic of implementation and then providing specific code samples of how to do it in Mastra. Highly recommend this book.

[Fifi Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very easy read, can be completed in an evening or two. Would say the author presents real-world use cases and examples of AI agents and is quite specific in his recommendations on how to best build/use them through things like prompting, model choices and how to handle guardrails amongst other themes.

It's a solid read if you want practical advice on building agents. Nothing particularly captivating or novel is presented here, but that isn't necessarily why you pick up this book.

[Marshall Hahn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book presents a good introduction to the topic. I appreciated how short and simple it was to read. With that being said, if you’re looking for a comprehensive deep dive this might not be what you’re looking for. All code examples show concepts using one specific framework, but that makes sense given the framework is created by the author’s company.

[John Matson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview and very fast read. Great way to get up to speed on all current facets around agentic AI. Wasn’t very well written, but you’re not likely reading it for the prose. Only qualm was that it went shallow on some topics and deep on others - especially around RAG. Overall would definitely recommend though!

[Manuela Vilas Boas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written and informative!

[raphael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Straight to the point

[Sean O'Dea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much less a “book” and more an extended Medium article that’s half tutorial and half advertisement for their AI SDK Mastra.

Worthwhile if you consider it a broad, superficial overview of agentic AI for the unacquainted.

Would have benefited from paying a guy online $20 to copy edit it for an hour or two. Has an embarrassing amount of typos, grammar, mistakes, and straight up unfinished sections with drafting notes still there.