A Practical Intro to AI Agents and Agentic AI (Udemy.com)

The fear has flipped.

In 2024, workers were embarrassed to be caught using AI. In 2026, they're embarrassed to be caught not using it well enough.

Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index analysed twenty thousand AI users across ten countries only to find that 65% are now afraid of falling behind. AI-skilled workers earn a 56% wage premium (PwC 2025, up from 25% the year before). AI literacy is the #1 skill professionals are adding to LinkedIn this year. And yet only 12% of professionals have ever used an AI agent, even though most of them already use ChatGPT or Claude every day.

This course closes that gap.

In four hours of focused, hands-on building, you'll walk away with six working AI agents running on your real data - across Gmail, Slack, Notion, Google Calendar, your browser, and the open web. Not theory. Not toy demos. Real, working agents that save you real time, every day.

No coding required. If you can write a Slack message, you can build everything in this course.

What you'll build

Agent 1 - Inbox Triage Agent. The agent reads your unread Gmail, categorizes everything by urgency, drafts personalized replies in your voice, and ships you a clean PDF priority report. We build it twice - once in Claude Cowork, then again in OpenWork (the free, open-source Claude Cowork alternative) - so you understand both setups.

Agent 2 - Meeting Prep Agent. The agent pulls Calendar events, Gmail history with the person, Slack mentions, related Notion docs, and live web research, and gives you a one-page brief with company overview, relationship history, and three sharp talking points.

Agent 3 - Lead Outreach Agent. You give it a Google Sheet of leads. It opens your browser by itself, visits each company's website, drafts personalized cold emails in Gmail, files a Notion summary, and posts a Slack update - fully autonomous, end-to-end.

Agent 4 - Morning Briefing Agent. You build a reusable AI skill that runs at 8am, scans your Gmail, Slack, Calendar, and Notion, and delivers a personalized briefing before you've finished your coffee. Build it once, schedule it, get an actionable briefing every morning.

Agent 5 - Custom AI Plugin. Package your skills, connectors, and scheduled tasks as a shareable Claude Cowork plugin and distribute it via shareable link, internal folder, or third-party marketplace. Plus you'll learn to install Anthropic's verified plugins (like Sales) for instant performance gains.

Agent 6 - Visual & Dashboard Output. Turn your agent work into polished assets - build Live Artifact dashboards that pull fresh data every time you open them, single-file HTML mockups via Claude Code, and AI-generated investor decks via claude_ai/design.

What you'll learn (beyond the agents)

Agent architecture. LLMs, memory, tools, and reasoning. Once you understand the shape, you can build agents for any task, not just the six in this course.

Claude Cowork vs. OpenWork. The smoothest paid experience and the free open-source alternative. Same agents, different setups, both production-ready.

Model Context Protocol (MCP). The open standard that lets any AI agent talk to any tool. Connect Gmail, Slack, Notion, and Calendar through both native connectors and custom open-source MCPs.

Browser use and computer use. When no connector exists, give your agent direct browser control. Click, scroll, fill forms, log in, scrape - without writing a line of automation code.

Multimodal vision LLMs. Why your agent sometimes needs to see the screen, and how to connect Claude Opus 4.7 via the Anthropic API for vision-based work.

AI skills (SKILL_md). Package your prompts as reusable, sharable, scheduled assets using Anthropic's /skill-creator.

Scheduled agents. Turn one-off prompts into automations that run every morning at 8am, every Friday at 5pm, or any cadence you set.

AI plugins. Install verified Anthropic plugins (Sales, etc.) and package your own work as plugins for your team or the world.

Bonus tools. Live Artifact dashboards, Claude Code prototyping, and claude_ai/design slide generation, all on top of the same connectors and skills.

Why now

AI literacy is the #1 skill professionals are adding to their profiles in 2026. WRITER's 2026 Enterprise Survey found 60% of executives plan to lay off workers who don't adopt AI; 92% of companies are actively building an internal "AI elite." Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index found only 16% of AI users actually orchestrate agents. The technology is here. Most people just haven't built one yet.

This course is designed to get you from watching to building in a single afternoon.

About your instructor

I'm Alex Honchar. I've been building AI for thirteen years. I co-founded Neurons Lab, an AI consultancy that has trained AI teams at HSBC and over 100 other Fortune 500 companies. Almost none of those people were developers - and this course is everything I'd cover with them, in the same order.

What's included

• 3+ hours of focused, hands-on video lectures

• All prompts, SKILL_md examples, and downloadable resources

• Q&A support directly from the instructor

• Lifetime access - including all 2026 updates

• 30-day money-back guarantee - no questions asked

• Certificate of completion

Click Enroll and build your first AI agent in the next thirty minutes.