A Practical Guide to Building Agents

Agent foundations, orchestration, guardrails

OpenAI

July 17, 2026

About

Get the basics of AI agents down, from what they are to building your first one. It is a guide from OpenAI, made for people new to AI agents.

For people new to AI agents. If you have played with agents and want to go deeper, this fits.

Most guides bury you in theory. This one is short and tells you what to actually do, so keep it open while you build.

Tell an agent apart from a plain workflow, and know when to use each

See how agents use tools, memory, and steps

Build your first working agent

Walk away with something you can reuse

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