Building Agents with Claude
What you will learn
- Use the Claude Agent SDK to build a tool-using agent in Python or TypeScript
- Define custom tools and integrate them into the agent loop
- Implement agent memory patterns for multi-step task continuity
- Evaluate agent performance considering cost, latency, and quality trade-offs
Knowledge check
1 of 2
Key takeaway
The Claude Agent SDK gives you programmatic control over the same agent loop that powers Claude Code — tools, permissions, cost limits, and output streaming. Building agents is accessible, but evaluating them is the hard part: you must measure task completion rate, cost per task, and failure modes to know if your agent is production-ready.
Practice Exercise
Hands-on practice — do this now to lock in what you learned
Open an AI assistant and try this:
If you have Python or Node.js installed, try the Claude Agent SDK quickstart at platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/quickstart. Build a minimal agent with one custom tool (even a simple one like a calculator or string formatter). Watch the agent loop in action — seeing the perceive-think-act cycle run in real-time builds intuition that reading about it cannot.