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Zarif Automates

Agents & AI Engineering

Building, evaluating, and running AI agents: frameworks, development environments, memory, tools, MCP, Codex and Claude Code in practice.

Choose your agent environment

Start with the three meanings of agent development environment: a coding product, an RL task system, or an execution runtime. Then inspect the RL environment projects or keep the short definition handy.

Start with

A focused reading order to help you choose your next step.

  1. Agent Development Environments: Coding Products, RL Tasks and Runtimes

    Separate the three meanings of agent development environment: coding-agent products, RL training environments and hosted execution runtimes.

  2. Your Research Agent Needs an Evidence Ledger Before It Needs a Better Prompt

    A practical research-agent design: preserve sources, separate facts from inferences, and deliver a decision someone can review.

  3. What Is Model Context Protocol (MCP)? The Complete 2026 Guide

    Learn what Model Context Protocol (MCP) is, how it works, and why it's the universal standard connecting AI agents to tools and data.

  4. How to Build a Multi-Agent AI System from Scratch

    Step-by-step tutorial for building a multi-agent AI system from scratch using CrewAI, LangGraph, or AutoGen — with architecture patterns and production tips.

  5. How to Deploy AI Agents to Production

    A 7-step engineer's guide to deploy AI agents production-ready in 2026: hosting, state, observability, evals, retries, cost controls, and rollouts.

  6. How to Monitor and Debug AI Agents

    Learn how to monitor and debug AI agents with traces, metrics, alerts, and replay evals. Stop guessing why your agent failed in production.

Agent-building course

Build a small ticket-label agent in stages: define its boundaries, add retrieval and state, then test failure and recovery. Each lesson has an exercise and a concrete deliverable.

Download the local lab. The downloadable Python 3.10+ lab uses only the standard library and synthetic data. Run python3 agent_lab.py for eight boundary tests. It makes no network or model calls and does not establish production readiness.

Define the boundaries

  1. AI APIs for Beginners: Make a Request and Handle the Response

    Send a request, parse its response and test API failures.

  2. Build a Webhook Receiver: Verify Deliveries and Recover After Failure

    Verify a delivery before accepting its work.

  3. Three Prompt Contracts You Can Check with Evaluation Fixtures

    Write three prompts with explicit output contracts.

  4. Run a Bounded Tool-Calling Loop in Python

    Separate a model proposal from an authorized action.

  5. Build an MCP Server and Client for a Ticket-Label Tool

    Run an MCP server and client; discover and test a tool.

Add context and control

  1. Build a Small RAG Pipeline and Measure What It Misses

    Filter retrieval by access and test insufficient evidence.

  2. Build Persistent Agent Memory with Updates, Expiry and Deletion

    Scope and expire remembered facts.

  3. Plan and Execute: Build a Bounded Ticket Workflow

    Bound a plan and stop when a dependency fails.

  4. Human Approval for Agents: Store and Check the Exact Decision

    Bind approval to the exact proposed change.

Evaluate failure and recovery

  1. Evaluate a Ticket Agent: Dataset, Scoring Code and Failure Report

    Run a dataset and preserve failures in explicit scoring denominators.

  2. Agent Evaluation Tools: Compare Five Options on One Ticket Task

    Reproduce a local evaluation and compare tools on the same task.

  3. Agent Design Patterns: Run Four Control Flows and Their Failures

    Run four control flows and inspect their failure behavior.

  4. Choose an Agent Starter: Inspect Three Repositories and Test One

    Audit the hidden assumptions in a starter.

Implement and review

  1. Use GitHub Copilot to Fix a Stale-Delete Bug You Can Verify

    Review a constrained coding change against behavior.

  2. Use Cursor to Build a Ticket Approval Interface You Can Test

    Make one small app change with a testable contract.

  3. Build an n8n Ticket-Triage Workflow and Test Its Failure Paths

    Import and execute a ticket-triage workflow with failure fixtures.

  4. Build a Ticket Workflow: Signed Delivery, Evidence and Human Approval

    Connect signed delivery, retrieval and approval; verify restart and replay.

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