Building Agents with cagent - Workshop#
Welcome to this hands-on workshop on building intelligent agents using cagent! This workshop will take you from basic agent concepts to building sophisticated multi-agent teams that can handle complex real-world tasks.
What is cagent?#
cagent is a powerful framework for building and orchestrating AI agents. Unlike simple chatbots, cagent agents can:
- Take Actions: Use tools to interact with files, run commands, browse the web, and more
- Work in Teams: Coordinate with specialized sub-agents for complex projects
- Remember Context: Maintain persistent memory across conversations
- Think and Plan: Use structured reasoning to solve complex problems
- Integrate Anywhere: Connect to external services via the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Prerequisites#
Before starting this workshop, you should have:
- cagent installed - Follow the installation instructions
- Docker Desktop running - Required for Step 3 onwards (mcp and agent sharing)
- Docker Hub account - For pushing and pulling shared agents
- AI API access - OpenAI, Anthropic, or other supported model providers
cagent installation instructions#
Prebuilt binaries for Windows, macOS and Linux can be found on the releases page of the project's GitHub repository
Once you've downloaded the appropriate binary for your platform, you may need to give it executable permissions. On macOS and Linux, this is done with the following command:
# linux amd64 build example
chmod +x /path/to/downloads/cagent-linux-amd64
You can then rename the binary to cagent and configure your PATH to be able
to find it (configuration varies by platform).
Set your API keys#
Based on the models you configure your agents to use, you will need to set the corresponding provider API key accordingly, all theses keys are optional, you will likely need at least one of these, though:
# For OpenAI models
export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
# For Anthropic models
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
# For Gemini models
export GOOGLE_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
Workshop Overview#
In this workshop we will learn the basics of creating agents and teams of agents. How to run them and how to share them.
While we learn how to use cagent we will focus on making a coding agent.
By the end of this workshop you should have everything you need to make your own agents that do things for you.