Building agents

Agents are autonomous entities that can run tasks, decide, and interact with their environment. In IBM watsonx Orchestrate, agents are a key component of the agentic AI framework, enabling you to create complex, dynamic systems that can adapt and respond to changing conditions.

Automate repetitive tasks, improve decision-making, enhance customer experience, and increase efficiency with the agents that you build. For instance, you can create an agent that automates data entry tasks, such as processing invoices or updating customer information.

The Agent builder provides a comprehensive set of features that helps you to:

  • Design and build agents by using a visual interface.
  • Integrate with existing systems.
  • Deploy and manage agents.
Requesting access to the feature:

This feature is available in the watsonx Orchestrate agentic experience. The new experience is built around your needs, with a focus on simplicity, productivity, and innovation. Complete the form Launch icon to request access to the new experience and preview the features' capabilities.

After the watsonx Orchestrate team review, approve your submission to access the new experience, and provision you with an instance, it's time to provide access to your team.
Refer to the Managing users topic for the instructions on how to add members to your instance based on the deployment that your instance is hosted.

The following reference list highlights the main steps of building agents:

  • Overview of the Agent builder

    Learn about the components of the Agent builder and how agents work so you can build them to achieve specific business cases by using AI.

  • Creating agents

    Learn the main steps to create a simple agent for your team.

  • Adding knowledge to agents

    Learn about how to add knowledge to agents to provide them with the necessary information to generate accurate and contextually relevant responses for specific use cases. You can directly upload files to the agent, or connect to a Milvus or Elasticsearch instance as a content repository.

  • Adding agents for orchestration

    Learn about how to use multi-agent orchestration for better collaboration and performance to complete tasks across multiple agents.

  • Adding tools to agents

    Learn more about how to add tools from the catalog, from your local instance, or from an OpenAPI specification to agents. Tools enhance agents capabilities and provide more comprehensive solutions for various tasks and interactions.

  • Adding instructions to agents

    Learn more about instructions prompts and how they guide the behavior and responses of agents to ensure accurate, relevant, and safe interactions.

  • Connecting to channels

    Learn more about connecting agents to various communication channels to enable seamless and interactive conversational experiences across platforms.

  • Deploying the agent

    Learn more about how to deploy your agent and make it available for use.

  • Using agents in the watsonx Orchestrate chat

    Learn more about how to use agents to achieve specific use cases through the chat.