Design Your Agent

Every great agent starts with a clear design. Fill in each section to create your agent's identity card.

The Five Pillars of Agent Design

Every effective agent rests on five design decisions. Get these right and everything else — prompts, code, deployment — falls into place. Get them wrong and no amount of engineering fixes a confused agent.

1. Name

A name gives your agent identity. It makes the agent memorable to users and distinguishes it from generic assistants. A clear name also anchors your own thinking — you stop saying "the bot" and start saying "Scout found an issue."

Example

Scout — a website monitoring agent. Short, active, implies watchfulness.

2. Goal

One clear sentence that answers three questions: what does it do, for whom, and to what standard? A vague goal like "help with stuff" produces an agent that spins in circles. A precise goal gives the agent a finish line.

Example

"Monitor my portfolio site and fix downtime within 60 seconds, alerting me only if a restart fails."

3. Tools

Tools are the agent's hands. Pick a focused set of 2-4 that directly serve the goal. Every extra tool is a decision the agent must make — and decisions cost tokens, time, and accuracy. Start lean; add tools only when the agent demonstrably needs them.

Example

health_check, restart_service, send_alert — three tools, one per capability Scout needs.

4. Memory

Memory is what the agent carries between sessions. Without it, every conversation starts from zero. Good memory stores three things: preferences (how the user likes things), outcomes (what worked and what failed), and patterns (recurring situations the agent should recognize).

Example

Past incidents, normal response times, which restarts fixed which errors — Scout gets smarter every run.

5. Guardrails

Guardrails are hard safety constraints — lines the agent must never cross, even if explicitly asked. They protect against catastrophic mistakes like deleting data, leaking secrets, or spending money without approval. Think of them as the agent's conscience.

Example

"Never delete production data" and "Never restart more than 2 times without human approval"

Now that you understand the five pillars, use the interactive form below to design your own agent. Fill in each section and watch your agent's identity card build in real time.

1. Name Your Agent

A good name makes it memorable. Keep it short.

2. Define Its Goal (one sentence)

Clear goals = effective agents. Vague goals = confused agents.

3. Pick 3 Tools

0/3 selected

4. Define Its Memory

What should it remember between sessions to do its job better?

5. Set One Guardrail

What should this agent NEVER do, even if asked?

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Your Agent

Define a goal...

Tools

Memory

Not defined yet

Guardrail

Not defined yet

Design Completeness

Agent Designed!

You just created a complete agent specification. In the next lesson, you'll turn this into a system prompt. Here's what your design looks like as code — this is the format you'll use to configure a real agent:

Python — Agent design spec as code

AGENT_CONFIG = {
    "name": "Scout",
    "goal": "Monitor my website and fix issues before I notice them",
    "tools": [
        "health_check",    # ping endpoints
        "restart_service",  # restart if down
        "send_alert",       # notify the human
    ],
    "memory": [
        "Past incidents and how they were resolved",
        "Normal response times for each endpoint",
    ],
    "guardrails": [
        "Never delete production data",
        "Never restart more than 2 times without human approval",
    ],
}

# This config becomes your system prompt + tool definitions
# in the next lesson. Design first, code second.

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