Stephen's Preface to Agents Unpacked

Why I Built an Agent to Teach Me About Agents, Using My Own Teaching Style

Like many, I started using chatbots when GPT whatever-version-it-was came out and took the world by storm. It was really not very good at the time (compared to today’s top-end chatbots), but it was clearly the start of something.

But things moved quickly, and I couldn’t quite catch up. I was busy with, you know, actual work, family, and life.

Then I started hearing lots of new terms, lots of new acronyms. I didn’t know what they were. I still don’t know what most of them are.

Then it was all about agents. I remember clearly thinking to myself: “Is this really any different from the ChatGPT-type chatbots?”

And here’s where this new series comes in. I decided to dive into agents and created a few. One of them is a learning tutor agent that I personalised to suit me.

I gave the agent all my tutorials and books. I gave the agent all the articles I wrote about my views on learning and technical writing.

I asked the agent to figure out from all this how I like to learn, how I like to communicate. I teach the way I like to learn, so it’s fine to put my teaching style in the mix. Then, I had a good long chat with my learning tutor agent to make sure we’re on the same page.

I gave a name to my agent (I named all my agents!) My personalised tutor is Priya.

This series is the joint effort between Priya and me to help me understand agents. What are they? How do they work?

Yes, it’s AI-generated content. But...

1. It’s generated by an AI that’s extremely well-versed in my style of learning and communication.

2. I had an active role in steering and editing the content. Here’s how...

What you’ll read in the following articles was created using the following process:

1. Priya researched the topic following my brief and created a course outline.

2. She drafted the first chapter.

3. I read through the file, leaving comments and questions along the way, directly within the text.

   1. I marked some comments as private.

   2. I marked some comments as public.

4. Priya revised the chapter by incorporating my comments and questions.

   1. She deleted the private comments from the text after making changes to address my comments.

   2. She kept my public comments and questions in the text, clearly marked as “Stephen’s questions”, and she answered them directly in the text.

5. I reviewed the chapter again and left more comments, and Priya revised the chapter again. We iterated through this until I was happy with the final text. And I was happy with the final text when I felt I understood everything in it and all my questions had been answered.

6. Priya then moves on to draft the second chapter, and the whole process starts again.

I will post these chapters as they emerge from this process. This is how I’m learning this topic. Hopefully, they may help some other people, too.

Here’s the planned table of contents for this Agents Unpacked series. But note, this may change!

• Stephen’s Preface to Agents Unpacked (this post)

• Part I — The Mental Shift

  • Chapter 1 — From Answer to Outcome

  • Chapter 2 — Anatomy of an Agent

  • Chapter 3 — Skills, Tools, and the Action Loop

• Part II — Agents in Practice

  • Chapter 4 — Why One Agent Is Often Not Enough

  • Chapter 5 — Where Agents Are Actually Useful

  • Chapter 6 — Delegation Design

• Part III — Building and Trusting Agentic Work

  • Chapter 7 — Designing Your First Agentic Workflow

  • Chapter 8 — When Things Go Wrong: Evaluation, Guardrails, and Trust

  • Chapter 9 — What to Build Next