← CurriculumWeek 07 / 10 · Automation
07

Agents and Orchestration

Go from chat to autonomous task completion — and develop the judgment to know when an agent is the right shape vs. a workflow.

Topics covered

  1. 01What is an agent, what is not, and why the distinction matters
  2. 02The agent loop: plan, act, observe, repeat
  3. 03Single-step vs. multi-step agents
  4. 04Agent vs. workflow vs. assistant — the choice that determines cost and reliability
  5. 05Frameworks: Claude Agent SDK, OpenAI Agents, Cursor agents, n8n
  6. 06Cost, latency, and reliability — the three things agents always cost more on
  7. 07Failure modes: infinite loops, hallucinated tool calls, scope creep

Build challenge

Deliverable

A working agent prototype that completes a real multi-step task in the hire's domain. Must include a 'stop condition' and at least one human-in-the-loop checkpoint.