Agentic AI bootcamp

Key topics

• Foundations of Agentic AI: From next-token prediction to reasoning models; limitations of classic LLMs vs reasoning LLMs; the core pillars of agentic systems—reasoning, context, and autonomy.
• Understanding LLMs: Context windows, session memory, and long-term memory (vector databases, knowledge graphs, summaries); data sources including pre-training, fine-tuning, and in-context learning.
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): Naïve RAG workflows and common challenges; RAG as a context enhancement strategy; preparing and structuring data for effective RAG pipelines.
• Agentic AI Components: Cognition (reasoning, planning, self-reflection), knowledge representation, and autonomy through tool use, action execution, and monitoring.
• Agentic Design Patterns: Planning, tool use, and reflection loops; Agentic RAG, routers, and iterative loops; sequential, parallel, and hierarchical workflows.
• Architectures for Agents: Single-agent vs multi-agent systems; human-in-the-loop strategies; hybrid reasoning pipelines and decision graphs.
• Advanced Context Techniques: Session summaries, hybrid memory systems, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and scalable context management.
• Observability, Safety & Governance: Guardrails, explainability, monitoring and evaluation, ethical alignment, and compliance strategies.
• Hands-On Exercises: Practical implementations of reasoning workflows, memory systems, RAG pipelines, and safe agent design.

Key topics

• Introduction to LLMs: Strengths and weaknesses of large language models
• Discriminative versus Generative AI: Predictive models contrasted with generative models
• Transformer Architecture: Tokenization, embeddings, positional encoding, and attention
• Embeddings and Similarity: Representing words as vectors and measuring closeness
• Attention Mechanism: Keys, queries, and values in self-attention
• Softmax and Probabilities: Converting scores to probabilities for next-word prediction
• Training and Fine-Tuning: Adapting models with curated data for new tasks
• Search and Retrieval: Building a semantic search engine with embeddings
• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG): Combining retrieval with generation for grounded answers
• Hands-On Exercises: Sentence Transformers, semantic search, attention scoring, and attention mechanisms

Key topics

• Introduction to LangChain: Purpose and scope of LangChain; building LLM-powered applications; common challenges in implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
• Core Components: LLMs and chat models; prompt templates and example selectors; document loaders and transformers for preprocessing data.
• Output Parsers: Extracting structured data; enforcing consistent output formats; handling parsing errors and validation failures.
• Retrieval: Embedding and vectorization strategies; retrievers and metadata filtering; parent document retrieval for contextual completeness.
• Vector Stores: Storing embeddings efficiently; performing scalable similarity search; optimizing retrieval for large datasets.
• Chains: Sequential prompt logic; pre- and post-LLM processing steps; integrating retrieval and tool use into end-to-end chains.
• Tool Use: Connecting APIs and external systems; feeding tool outputs back into workflows; managing retries and error handling.
• LangChain Expression Language (LCEL): Building modular workflows using runnable components; piping operations; parallel branches and composable pipelines.
• Hands-On Exercises: Constructing retrieval chains; parsing structured outputs; combining LangChain modules into coherent, production-ready workflows.

Key topics

• Vector Database Fundamentals: Embeddings and vector storage; approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) vs k-nearest neighbor (kNN) search; modern vector database architectures and data models.
• Hybrid Retrieval Design: Combining dense and sparse vectors; applying metadata filters and payload indexing; full-text tokenization for mixed semantic and keyword queries.
• Advanced Techniques: Maximal Marginal Relevance (MMR) for improving result diversity; Discovery APIs for broader coverage; monitoring and maintaining HNSW index health.
• Agentic RAG Concepts: Using AI-native vector databases as long-term memory for agents; multi-step retrieval with reasoning loops; context selection strategies and hallucination mitigation.
• Semantic Caching: Caching semantically similar queries using vector similarity; time-to-live (TTL) and invalidation policies; optimizing cost and latency.
• Hands-On Exercises: Exploring AI-native vector database fundamentals; implementing hybrid search; applying re-ranking techniques such as MMR; monitoring HNSW index health; building a RAG pipeline with agentic orchestration.

Key topics

• Complex Agentic Workflows: Designing workflows with system and user prompts; integrating retrieval, memory layers, web search, and vector databases; implementing critique and refinement loops.
• Deterministic Chains and Control Flows: Building sequential pipelines with pre- and post-LLM steps; enforcing structured task execution and predictable control logic.
• Agent Reliability and Dynamic Decisions: Using router agents and conditional flows; balancing autonomy with control for robust task execution.
• LangGraph Fundamentals: Understanding nodes, edges, and state management; condition-based execution for reliable and auditable workflows.
• Tool Integration: Connecting APIs, databases, and external systems through node-based tool calls; updating shared state after execution.
• Agentic Design Patterns: Reflection for self-critique; tool use for external actions; planning for task decomposition and structured reasoning.
• Multi-Agent Collaboration: Implementing parallel, sequential, loop, and router flows; incorporating error handling and human supervision strategies.
• Multi-Agent Architectures: Designing hierarchical delegation systems; approval nodes; shared memory and resource coordination.
• Hands-On Experience: Practical implementation of advanced context engineering concepts across agentic workflows and multi-agent systems.

Key topics

• Why Agentic Patterns Matter: Transforming single-pass prompting into iterative, goal-oriented reasoning loops for more adaptive and reliable systems.
• Reflection Pattern: Enabling agents to evaluate, critique, and refine their own outputs through structured feedback and revision cycles.
• Planning Pattern: Designing stepwise reasoning flows that decompose complex goals, manage task dependencies, and adapt dynamically to new information.
• Tool Use Pattern: Connecting models with external systems to retrieve data, execute actions, and extend problem-solving capabilities beyond the model’s internal knowledge.
• Multi-Agent Collaboration Pattern: Coordinating specialized agents with defined roles; enabling structured communication and collaborative problem-solving.
• Pattern Trade-Offs: Balancing autonomy with control, flexibility with stability, and creativity with reliability in agent design.
• Pattern Composition: Integrating reflection, planning, and tool use into hybrid workflows for building more capable and adaptive agents.
• Hands-On Labs: Implementing individual patterns and combining them into complete, production-ready agent workflows for real-world tasks.

Key topics

• Multi-Agent Coordination: Collaboration challenges in multi-agent systems; message routing and task orchestration; scaling cooperation while maintaining stability and control.
• Need for Agentic Protocols: Establishing discovery and negotiation mechanisms; structured task and state management; enabling secure and reliable agent cooperation.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP): Client–server architecture for LLM tool integration; standardized access to data and prompts; exposing tools, resources, and templates in a structured way.
• MCP Architecture: Roles of hosts, clients, and servers; message exchange formats and artifacts; connecting applications, IDEs, and assistants within unified workflows.
• Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A): Task-oriented communication flows; capability discovery using Agent Cards; structured message parts and artifact formats for coordination.
• Agent Communication Protocol (ACP): Open ecosystem for cross-agent interaction; routing, discovery, and dynamic updates; interoperability across frameworks and platforms.
• MCP vs ACP vs A2A: Comparing scope, architectural complexity, and message types; selecting appropriate protocols for different workflow requirements.
• Hands-On Exercise – MCP Client with Streamlit: Setting up the development environment; installing dependencies and configuring API access; connecting an MCP client to servers; discovering tools; automating workflows through tool invocation, data retrieval, and output validation.

Key topics

• Origins & Motivation: Addressing fragmented integrations and brittle bespoke adapters; introducing a unified, interoperable interface — the “USB-C for AI.”
• Protocol Structure: Client–server handshake model; defining resources, tools, and prompts; JSON-RPC transport with structured, schema-driven messages.
• Context Exposure: How MCP surfaces tools, data, and metadata through a consistent schema to enable discoverability, governance, and controlled access.
• Agentic Integration: Connecting MCP endpoints to reflection, planning, tool-use, and multi-agent coordination patterns for modular and scalable systems.
• Hands-On Labs: Setting up an MCP client in Streamlit; discovering and registering tools; automating workflows through data retrieval and validation; logging traces for monitoring and review.

Key topics

• Need for Evaluation: Reliability, accuracy, and safety; business and ethical alignment; transparency and user trust.
• Challenges in Evaluation: Hallucinations and prompt sensitivity; weak context grounding; subjectivity and trade-offs between accuracy, fluency, and creativity.
• Benchmarking Approaches: MMLU for multitask accuracy; HELM for robustness and fairness; BBH and HotpotQA for reasoning and multi-hop QA.
• Text Quality Metrics: BLEU for precision; ROUGE for recall; BERTScore for semantic similarity.
• RAG Evaluation (RAGAs): RAGAS for faithfulness and answer relevance; context precision and recall; joint retrieval-generation scoring.
• G-Eval: G-Eval for fluency, faithfulness, relevance; claim-level scoring of open-ended outputs.
• Additional Benchmarks: GLUE for NLU; TriviaQA for QA; RealToxicityPrompts for safety; Blended Skill Talk for dialogue quality.
• Other Metrics: Perplexity for confidence; METEOR for alignment; MRR and MAP for ranking; ROSCOE for reasoning quality.
• Hands-On Exercises: Apply RAGAS to RAG pipelines; compare BLEU, ROUGE, BERTScore; evaluate agent outputs using G-Eval.

Project tracks

• Conversational Workflow Orchestration: Design a multi-turn assistant coordinating tasks across specialized agents.
• Knowledge-Enhanced Agent: Integrate search and APIs for grounding, fact-checking, and real-time data access.
• Document-Aware Action Agent: Retrieve and reason over documents; trigger external tools or services based on insights.
• Orchestrated Collaboration (MCP): Build coordinated multi-agent systems using the Model Context Protocol for seamless tool and enterprise integration.

Attendees will receive

• Comprehensive datasets: Industry-spanning document collections for robust development and testing.
• Step-by-step implementation guides: Clear instructions from environment setup to deployment.
• Ready-to-use code templates: Prebuilt templates within Data Science Dojo’s sandbox for accelerated development.

Learners can choose to implement

• Virtual Assistant
• Content Generation (Marketing Co-pilot)
• Conversational Agent (Legal & Compliance Assistant)
• Content Personalizer
• MCP Chatbot — an AI agent with calendar, CRM, and API integrations

Outcome

A production-ready multi-agent application demonstrating mastery of reasoning, retrieval, tool use, and protocol-driven interoperability.