Professional Certificate

Practical AI Agents and Agentic AI

Automation, Messaging, Voice, Payments and Creative Production

A few years ago, getting a computer to answer a customer, read an invoice, write an advert or take a phone call meant hiring a software team. Today a single person with a laptop, a free account and a clear idea can build a system that does all four. The systems that make this possible are called AI agents, and when they plan, review their own work and cooperate with other agents to reach a goal, the field calls it agentic AI. An agent is a program that uses a language model to understand a goal, decide what to do next, use tools such as a spreadsheet, a payment service or a messaging app, and keep going until the job is done or a person needs to step in. This book is about building those systems for real work. It is written for people who want to automate their own business, offer automation and AI production as a service, or work in a team that does. It covers the agents that run quietly in the background of a business, the ones that talk to customers on WhatsApp and on the phone, the ones that take payments, and the tools that let a small studio produce adverts, music and drama that once needed a crew.

26 chapters, 641 pages. Published by RAIN, 2026. Full contents