Mastering AI Agents: Building from Scratch for Real-World Applications
This workshop is designed to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of designing and building AI agents from the ground up. Moving beyond reliance on pre-built frameworks like CrewAI or Autogen, this session emphasizes learning the core mechanics of agent development to enable fully customizable solutions.
Led by Hamza Farooq, a seasoned AI expert and educator, the workshop is both technically rigorous and highly practical. Participants will gain hands-on experience in building intelligent agents capable of autonomous decision-making, task orchestration, and real-world problemsolving.
By the end of the workshop, attendees will walk away with the knowledge and tools needed to develop robust, scalable, and production-grade AI agents tailored to their specific use cases.
Hamza Farooq
Founder
Venture Partner | Adjunct Professor
Traversaal.ai
Aperture VC | UCLA/Stanford
Time and Location
April 16th, 2025
9:00am - 3:30pm
Cobb Galleria
Curriculum
Workshop Outcomes
By participating in this workshop, attendees will:
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Learn Core Fundamentals: Understand the architecture and foundational concepts of AI agents, including reasoning frameworks, decision trees, and multi-agent orchestration.
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Build Agents from Scratch: Gain hands-on experience in coding AI agents from the ground up, bypassing pre-built frameworks for maximum customization.
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Implement Advanced Techniques: Explore cutting-edge approaches like semantic chunking, task decomposition, and performance optimization for agents.
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Deploy in Production: Learn deployment strategies using open-source tools such as vLLM, Ollama, and Hugging Face endpoints for scalable real-world applications.
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Solve Real-World Problems: Work through guided exercises that apply agent development to domains like customer service automation, enterprise RAG systems, and knowledge management. AI agents from scratch 2
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Contribute to Open Source: Learn how to structure and share your work with the broader AI community to accelerate innovation.
Workshop Agenda
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Introduction to AI Agents What are AI agents? Key use cases in enterprise, healthcare, and customer service. Limitations of existing frameworks.
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Building the Core Agent Architecting an agent: Decision-making loops and task planning. Developing basic capabilities: Task execution and environment interaction.
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Advanced Agent Techniques Task decomposition and multi-agent orchestration. Integrating semantic chunking for contextual reasoning.
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Hands-On Development Coding your first agent from scratch: Guided exercise. Fine-tuning and optimizing agent performance.
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Deployment and Real-World Integration Deploying agents using open-source tools (vLLM, Ollama, etc.). Creating scalable and production-ready workflows.
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Stretch Goals Implementing autonomous feedback loops. Exploring multi-agent collaboration for complex problem-solving.
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Wrap-Up Discussion of lessons learned. Resources for continued learning and open-source contributions.
Workshop Requirements
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Coming soon
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AI practitioners and researchers.
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Developers seeking to transition into advanced agent-building roles.
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Organizations looking to implement custom AI solutions.
Who is your Instructor?
Hamza Farooq is an AI Startup founder, educator, researcher, and practitioner with years of experience in cutting-edge AI development. He has worked with global organizations, governments, and top universities, including Stanford and UCLA, to design and deploy state-ofthe-art AI solutions. Hamza is the author of Building LLM Applications from Scratch and the founder of Traversaal.ai, a company specializing in Enterprise Knowledge Management and AI guardrails. Known for his engaging teaching style and deep technical expertise, Hamza has trained thousands of students and professionals to master AI concepts and build production-ready applications