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microsoft/ai-agents-for-beginners

12 Lessons to Get Started Building AI Agents

49,153stars
17,106forks
49,153watchers
MIT License
Updated 1/21/2026
agentic-aiagentic-frameworkagentic-ragai-agentsai-agents-frameworkautogengenerative-aisemantic-kernel

README.md

AI Agents for Beginners - A Course

Generative AI For Beginners

A course teaching everything you need to know to start building AI Agents

GitHub license GitHub contributors GitHub issues GitHub pull-requests PRs Welcome

🌐 Multi-Language Support

Supported via GitHub Action (Automated & Always Up-to-Date)

Arabic | Bengali | Bulgarian | Burmese (Myanmar) | Chinese (Simplified) | Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong) | Chinese (Traditional, Macau) | Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan) | Croatian | Czech | Danish | Dutch | Estonian | Finnish | French | German | Greek | Hebrew | Hindi | Hungarian | Indonesian | Italian | Japanese | Kannada | Korean | Lithuanian | Malay | Malayalam | Marathi | Nepali | Nigerian Pidgin | Norwegian | Persian (Farsi) | Polish | Portuguese (Brazil) | Portuguese (Portugal) | Punjabi (Gurmukhi) | Romanian | Russian | Serbian (Cyrillic) | Slovak | Slovenian | Spanish | Swahili | Swedish | Tagalog (Filipino) | Tamil | Telugu | Thai | Turkish | Ukrainian | Urdu | Vietnamese

Prefer to Clone Locally?

This repository includes 50+ language translations which significantly increases the download size. To clone without translations, use sparse checkout:

git clone --filter=blob:none --sparse https://github.com/microsoft/ai-agents-for-beginners.git
cd ai-agents-for-beginners
git sparse-checkout set --no-cone '/*' '!translations' '!translated_images'

This gives you everything you need to complete the course with a much faster download.

If you wish to have additional translations languages supported are listed here

GitHub watchers GitHub forks GitHub stars

Microsoft Foundry Discord

🌱 Getting Started

This course has lessons covering the fundamentals of building AI Agents. Each lesson covers its own topic so start wherever you like!

There is multi-language support for this course. Go to our available languages here.

If this is your first time building with Generative AI models, check out our Generative AI For Beginners course, which includes 21 lessons on building with GenAI.

Don't forget to star (🌟) this repo and fork this repo to run the code.

Meet Other Learners, Get Your Questions Answered

If you get stuck or have any questions about building AI Agents, join our dedicated Discord Channel in the Microsoft Foundry Discord.

What You Need

Each lesson in this course includes code examples, which can be found in the code_samples folder. You can fork this repo to create your own copy.

The code example in these exercises, utilize Azure AI Foundry and GitHub Model Catalogs for interacting with Language Models:

This course also uses the following AI Agent frameworks and services from Microsoft:

For more information on running the code for this course, go to the Course Setup.

🙏 Want to help?

Do you have suggestions or found spelling or code errors? Raise an issue or Create a pull request

📂 Each lesson includes

  • A written lesson located in the README and a short video
  • Python code samples supporting Azure AI Foundry and Github Models (Free)
  • Links to extra resources to continue your learning

🗃️ Lessons

LessonText & CodeVideoExtra Learning
Intro to AI Agents and Agent Use CasesLinkVideoLink
Exploring AI Agentic FrameworksLinkVideoLink
Understanding AI Agentic Design PatternsLinkVideoLink
Tool Use Design PatternLinkVideoLink
Agentic RAGLinkVideoLink
Building Trustworthy AI AgentsLinkVideoLink
Planning Design PatternLinkVideoLink
Multi-Agent Design PatternLinkVideoLink
Metacognition Design PatternLinkVideoLink
AI Agents in ProductionLinkVideoLink
Using Agentic Protocols (MCP, A2A and NLWeb)LinkVideoLink
Context Engineering for AI AgentsLinkVideoLink
Managing Agentic MemoryLinkVideo
Exploring Microsoft Agent FrameworkLink
Building Computer Use Agents (CUA)Coming Soon
Deploying Scalable AgentsComing Soon
Creating Local AI AgentsComing Soon
Securing AI AgentsComing Soon

🎒 Other Courses

Our team produces other courses! Check out:

LangChain

LangChain4j for Beginners LangChain.js for Beginners


Azure / Edge / MCP / Agents

AZD for Beginners Edge AI for Beginners MCP for Beginners AI Agents for Beginners


Generative AI Series

Generative AI for Beginners Generative AI (.NET) Generative AI (Java) Generative AI (JavaScript)


Core Learning

ML for Beginners Data Science for Beginners AI for Beginners Cybersecurity for Beginners Web Dev for Beginners IoT for Beginners XR Development for Beginners


Copilot Series

Copilot for AI Paired Programming Copilot for C#/.NET Copilot Adventure

🌟 Community Thanks

Thanks to Shivam Goyal for contributing important code samples demonstrating Agentic RAG.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.opensource.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., status check, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Trademarks

This project may contain trademarks or logos for projects, products, or services. Authorized use of Microsoft trademarks or logos is subject to and must follow Microsoft's Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship. Any use of third-party trademarks or logos is subject to those third-parties' policies.

Getting Help

If you get stuck or have any questions about building AI apps, join:

Microsoft Foundry Discord

If you have product feedback or errors while building visit:

Microsoft Foundry Developer Forum