Grant Scout
Find and compare relevant funding opportunities.
Beginner codingFree to start
Build Your First AI Agent
Give AI a goal—and the tools to accomplish it.
Build an agent that can reason through a task, use external tools, work across multiple steps, and return a useful result with human approval where it matters.
Basic familiarity with JavaScript is helpful, but agent experience is not required.
What you’ll build
A small AI agent that plans a task, selects approved tools, records its work, and pauses before consequential actions.
A working example
See the workflow before you build it.
Try: “Find relevant open grants for a neighborhood technology program and prepare a shortlist for my review.”
The agent searches approved sources, checks eligibility, compares deadlines, and asks for approval before saving a final shortlist.
Community Grant Scout
Project previewFind relevant open grants for a neighborhood technology program and prepare a shortlist for my review.
Working through the project
Opportunity shortlist
4 eligible grants found
Human approval
Review required before export
What you can make
Start from the same foundation. Make it yours.
Use the project for your community, organization, business, research, or idea.
Meeting Prep Agent
Collect context and prepare a concise briefing.
Research Monitor
Track updates from a defined set of sources.
Operations Assistant
Complete a repeatable workflow with approval gates.
What you’ll learn
Understand what is happening underneath.
Finish with a working project and a practical understanding of the choices behind it.
01
Understand how agents differ from chatbots
02
Define a clear goal and stopping condition
03
Give an agent a limited set of tools
04
Carry context through a multi-step task
05
Validate tool inputs and structured outputs
06
Add human approval before consequential actions
07
Inspect traces, failures, cost, and reliability
What we’ll use
Open tools, explained as you go.
You do not need to know these tools beforehand. The guide introduces each one when you encounter it.
Agent framework
Coordinate reasoning and tool calls
AI model
Plan the task and interpret results
Tool APIs
Let the agent retrieve or transform information
Approval layer
Keep a person in control of important actions
How the guide works
Learn by doing the real workflow.
Define
Give the agent one bounded goal and clear limits.
Connect
Add tools and test how the agent selects them.
Supervise
Add review points, inspect traces, and improve reliability.
Ready to build?
Give your first agent a useful job.
60 minutes Beginner coding Practical project
Part of the AFAI AI Toolkit · Practical, open resources for everyone