Getting Started: AI Agents in C#

Learn how to use AI Agents that can reason, use tools and take action to build products.

About This Course

AI Agents are applications that can reason, use tools, manage memory, and take action to achieve goals. In this course you�ll learn how to build them in C#. Starting with the fundamentals of Large Language Models (LLMs) and prompt engineering, you�ll progress to implementing tool use, reasoning loops, and context management, before creating full agents that automate tasks like managing invoices. You�ll also learn how to integrate OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, and Google Gemini into your .NET projects using Microsoft.Extensions.AI, and finish by building a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to connect your agents with clients like Claude.ai. By the end of this course, you�ll have the skills and source code to create your own powerful AI agents in C#.

Course Curriculum

5h 40m 9 sections

Welcome

01:04 Free preview

What will you learn in this course?

01:20 Free preview

Who is the course for and prerequisites

01:26 Free preview

What is an LLM?

07:19

Prompt Engineering And AI Agents

04:02

Context Windows And Conversation History

03:21

Making A Completion Request from C#

10:53

Understanding Messages And Roles

21:12

Overview of AI Service Providers

08:54

Microsoft.Extensions.AI

15:31

Chatting With OpenAI From C#

10:31

Chatting With Gemini From C#

06:49

Chatting With Claude From C#

04:40

What Is Tool Calling?

09:49

Defining a Tool in JSON

08:27

Handling Tool Call Responses

03:44

Mapping C# Functions To Tools

22:24

Picking The Right Tool For The Job

12:14

Handling Tool Errors

08:25

What makes something an agent?

02:49

ReAct pattern (Thought, Action, Observation)

08:25

Completion Models vs Reasoning Models

05:25

Adding Actions To Your Agent

11:43

Why memory matters

02:42

Session memory and working memory

06:59

Episodic Memory and Semantic Memory

09:24

Summarising long chats automatically

10:37

Caching On The Provider

05:21

Agents For The Real World

03:06

A Chatbot For An Invoicing Platform

27:55

Reading Data Over An API

10:50

Reading a Knowledge Base (without RAG)

17:29

Automating Invoice Management

15:36

Introduction to Model Context Protocol (MCP)

10:31

A Remote MCP Server In C#

12:49

Adding Prompts For The User

05:09

Adding MCP Resources

05:02

Testing Your Remote Server In Claude

06:43

Meet Your Instructor

James Charlesworth

James Charlesworth

James is a Director of Engineering, O'Reilly author, speaker, and YouTuber with 20 years of experience in the tech industry. He has worked across startups and publicly listed tech companies, helping to build and scale software products. James focuses on teaching product skills to engineers, building high-performing product engineering teams, and defining the "Product Engineer" career path. He shares practical advice on software engineering, product development, and career growth through his Train to Code YouTube channel.

View all courses by James Charlesworth

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