Lecture Notes on Building AI Agents with Naden

Course Overview

• Aim: Take students from beginner to building powerful non-coding AI agents.
• No coding experience needed.
• Success story: Instructor made over half a million dollars in revenue in 8 months.

Course Agenda

• Setting up a free trial and credentials.
• Building step-by-step AI automations.
• Outcome: Over 15 AI automations built by course end.
• Chapters are timestamped for easy navigation.

Course Structure

• Foundations
  • Introduction to AI agents and current opportunities.
  • Setting up a free trial and understanding the UI.
  • Basic foundational knowledge for AI automation.
• Workflows
  • Step-by-step workflows with integrations and automations.
  • APIs and HTTP requests setup with examples.

Advanced Topics in AI Agents

• AI agent tools and memory management.
• Multi-agent architectures.
• Prompting techniques and live examples.
• Webhooks and webhooks-triggered workflows.
• MCP servers and Naden self-hosted setup.
• Lessons from practical AI agent deployment.

Understanding AI Agents

• AI agents as digital employees or virtual assistants.
• Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT: input, process, output, but no action.
• Power of LLMs with integrated tools for actionable workflows.

AI Workflows vs. AI Agents

• AI Workflow
  • Linear process with defined steps.
  • Example: HubSpot lead -> Research -> Draft email -> Send email.
• AI Agent
  • Autonomous decision-making with tool integration.
  • More flexible but costly and slower.
  • Use when process is unpredictable or requires decision-making.

Building Effective AI Systems

• Key considerations: Workflow vs. Agent.
• Determine if process is deterministic or non-deterministic.
• AI workflows: Reliability, cost-efficiency, easy maintenance, scalability.
• Importance of starting with AI workflows to understand basic concepts.

Anatomy of an AI Agent

• Components:
  • Input, LLM, Output.
  • Brain: LLM and memory (short-term & long-term).
  • Instructions: System prompt with roles and tools.

Business Impact of AI

• AI adoption in small businesses and ROI.
• Real-world outcomes in marketing, customer service, and supply chain.
• Economic case for AI: Increased profitability and revenue growth.

Setting Up Naden

• Naden Dashboard
  • Creating and managing workflows.
  • Overview of projects and admin settings.
• Creating and Testing Workflows
  • Triggers and nodes.
  • Input, configuration, and output settings.
  • Examples: Google Drive, APIs, AI Nodes.

Practical Applications

• Real-world workflow examples: Customer support, content creation, RAG pipelines.
• Credential setup for API connections (OpenAI, Google, Pine Cone).
• Integrating AI tools to automate and optimize business processes.

Conclusion

• Importance of mastering AI for business competitiveness.
• Early adoption advantages and positioning for future demand.
• Encouragement to build, iterate, and refine AI systems.