build-with-ag2

AG2 Workshop: Building Multi-Agent Systems

A hands-on workshop teaching you to build, orchestrate, test, and deploy multi-agent AI systems using AG2.

23 episodes covering fundamentals through production deployment. Designed for YouTube (3-4 min per episode) and university programs (5 lectures).

Prerequisites

• Python 3.12+ recommended (3.12+ required for Episode 15 MCP)
• Basic Python proficiency
• An OpenAI API key (get one here)
• Estimated API cost for all 23 episodes: $3-5 (using gpt-4o-mini)

Getting Started

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ag2ai/build-with-ag2.git
cd build-with-ag2/ag2-workshop

# Set up your environment
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env and add your OPENAI_API_KEY

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Start with Episode 1
jupyter notebook episodes/ep01_why_agents.ipynb

Note: The .env file lives in ag2-workshop/ (one level above episodes/). Python-dotenv searches parent directories automatically, so load_dotenv() in notebooks will find it.

Episodes

Basics (Episodes 1-4)

#	Title	What You Build
1	Why Multi-Agent Systems?	See agents in action (demo)
2	Your First Agent	A single AI agent that chats
3	Give Your Agent Tools	An agent that checks the weather
4	Two Agents Working Together	Researcher + reviewer collaboration

Patterns (Episodes 5-9)

#	Title	What You Build
5	Team of Agents: Taking Turns	3-agent debate with round-robin
6	Team of Agents: Smart Speaker Selection	LLM-driven speaker selection
7	Routing Agents: Conditions, Handoffs & Escalation	Customer support triage system
8	Pipelines & Hierarchies	Document pipeline + research hierarchy
9	Choosing the Right Pattern	Decision framework (theory)

Applications (Episodes 10-15)

#	Title	What You Build
10	Build a Customer Service System	Complete multi-agent app (guided)
11	Build a Research Assistant	3-agent research pipeline
12	Give Your Agents a Knowledge Base	RAG-powered document Q&A
13	Web Browsing Agents	Agent that fetches web content
14	Give Your Agent a UI	Streamlit + AG-UI frontend
15	Connect to External Tools (MCP)	MCP server integration

Production (Episodes 16-20)

#	Title	What You Build
16	See What Your Agents Are Doing	Logging + OpenTelemetry tracing
17	Security & Safe Code Execution	Input validation + approval gates
18	Testing Agents	Unit tests + evaluation framework
19	Control Your Agent Costs	Token tracking + model tiering
20	Deploy to Production (GCP)	Docker + Cloud Run deployment

Specialized Patterns (Episodes 21-22)

#	Title	What You Build
21	Multiple Agents, One Task: Redundancy & Nested Chats	Parallel agents + evaluator
22	Make Agents Think Harder: Tree of Thoughts	ReasoningAgent with search strategies

Closing

#	Title	What You Learn
23	What’s Next	AG2 Beta, ecosystem, future directions

Notebook Structure

Each episode notebook has two sections:

• Core content — Essential concepts + one hands-on build. This is what YouTube episodes cover.
• Additional content — Deeper dives, alternative approaches, design rationale. For university lectures and self-study.

For Instructors

This workshop maps to 5 university lectures:

Lecture	Episodes	Focus
1. Foundations	1-4	Agent basics, tools, two-agent systems
2. Orchestration	5-9	Patterns, handoffs, decision framework
3. Applications	10-15	Real apps, RAG, web, UI, MCP
4. Production	16-20	Observability, security, testing, costs, deployment
5. Advanced	21-23	Specialized patterns, reasoning, future

Troubleshooting

See episodes/troubleshooting.md for common issues and fixes.

Resources

• AG2 Documentation
• AG2 Playground — try patterns interactively, no setup needed
• AG2 GitHub
• AG2 Discord
• More Examples

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