How to Build an Agent
Learn how to build an agent -- from choosing realistic task examples, to building
the MVP to testing quality and safety, to deploying in production.
6 MIN READ JUL 9, 2025
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While seemingly every company is talking about building agents this year, far
fewer have done it. It’s easy to let your imagination run wild with how agents can
transform your business, but many teams are unsure where to begin, how to
make progress, and where to set expectations.
In this guide, we’ll walk through a framework for going from idea to impact—
illustrated with a real-world example of building an email agent.
Step-by-step diagram for process of building an agent
Step 1: Define your agent’s job with examples
Choose something realistic and something that requires an agent.
Pick something you could teach a smart intern. If your best intern could never
complete the task given enough time and resources, the task may be unrealistic
or too ambitious. Prove you can get the basics down before activating expert
mode.
Start by coming up with 5-10 concrete examples of the task. This serves two
purposes:
First, it validates that your idea is well-scoped - not too trivial or vague
Second, gives you a benchmark for measuring performance later.
Example: Building an Email Agent
At this step, we’d define what tasks our agent needs to handle, which likely
includes:
Prioritize urgent emails from key stakeholders
Schedule meetings based on calendar availability
Ignore spam or emails that don't require responses
Answer product questions based on company documentation
Red flags to avoid:
If you can’t come up with concrete examples, your scope is probably too
broad.
Using an agent when traditional software would work better (e.g., when the
logic is simple, fixed, and already implemented elsewhere). Agents are slow,
expensive, and can be finicky at times. If traditional software gets the job
done - just use that!
Expecting magic that doesn't exist (e.g., connecting to APIs or datasets that
don’t exist or can’t be built yet)
Step 2: Design operating procedure
Write up a detailed standard operating procedure (SOP), with step-by-step
instructions for how a human would perform the task or process.
This step helps confirm that you’ve chosen a problem with a clear, reasonable
scope. It also surfaces the key steps, decisions, and tools your agent will likely
need to handle—laying the groundwork for what to build.
Example: Building an Email Agent
For our email agent, a step-by-step procedure could look like below:
Analyze email content and sender context to categorize response priority
Checks calendar availability; schedules video conference meeting
Draft a response based on the email, sender, and scheduling context
Send the email after a quick human review and approval
Writing this out helps ensure the task is scoped appropriately, and surfaces the
tools and logic our agent will need to handle.
Step 3: Build MVP with prompt
Choosing a place to start is important. If your agent is complex, trying to do it all
in one go is too ambitious. Start by designing the agent’s architecture outlined by
the SOP: how it will flow, what decisions it needs to make, and where LLM
reasoning is essential.
Then, build an MVP by focusing on the most critical LLM reasoning task(s) (e.g.,
classification, decision-making) and creating a prompt that handles them well.
Most agents fail because the LLM can't reason well enough for the task. Getting a
single prompt working with hand-fed data will help you build up confidence
before proceeding to build the full agent. Prompt engineering tools like
LangSmith can help streamline this process, from managing prompt versions, to
testing across scenarios or datasets, and tracking performance over time as you
iterate.
Keep it simple by:
Starting with manual inputs for any data or context the prompt needs (hold
off on automation for now)
Testing against your outlined examples from Step 1 to validate performance
across common use cases
Focusing on getting the LLM reasoning right
Example: Building an Email Agent
At this stage, we’re identifying and solving one high-leverage reasoning task to
start with.
For our email agent, that might mean focusing just on classifying emails by
urgency and intent (e.g., meeting request, support questions), as this is a
foundational step that the rest of the agent depends on.
Start by writing a core prompt that does just this, with hand-fed inputs like:
Email content: “Can we meet next week about LangChain’s product
roadmap?”
Sender: “Jeff Bezos”, Title: “CEO of Amazon”
Output: Intent = “Meeting Request”, Urgency = “High”
Once the model consistently gets this right across your test cases, you’ll have
confidence that the core logic is sound—and a strong foundation to build on.
Step 4: Connect & Orchestrate
Now that we have a working prompt, it’s time to connect the prompt to real
data and user inputs.
Start by identifying what context or data the prompt needs—such as email
content, calendar availability, and documentation of products—and plan how to
access it programmatically (e.g., via APIs, databases, or file systems).
Then, write orchestration logic to connect the right data into your prompt. In
simple cases, this might just mean passing inputs directly. For more complex
workflows, you may need agentic logic to decide which data sources to query,
when to call them, and how to combine their outputs before prompting the LLM.
Example: Building an Email Agent
For our email agent, this step could involve integrating with the Gmail API (to
read incoming emails), Google Calendar API (to check availability), and a CRM
or contact database (to enrich sender context).
We’d then build orchestration logic like the following :
1 A new email triggers the agent
2 The agent fetches sender info from the CRM or via web search
3 It passes the full context into the prompt to determine urgency and
whether a response is needed
4 If a meeting is appropriate, it checks calendar availability and proposes
times
5 The agent drafts a response
6 After human review, it sends the email
Step 5: Test & Iterate
Begin by manually testing your MVP using the examples you defined in Step 1.
The goal is to verify that your agent is producing reasonable, accurate outputs for
your core use cases. If your system involves multiple LLM calls or steps, it’s
helpful to set up tracing using tools like LangSmith to visualize the flow and
debug how decisions are made at each stage.
Once manual testing is solid, scale to automated testing to ensure consistency
and catch edge cases. Teams will often beef up examples to a few dozen to get a
better sense of the agent’s strengths and weaknesses. This also helps you
quantify performance before adding more complexity:
Run all examples (original + new) programmatically through your agent
Define automated success metrics — this forces clarity around your agent’s
expected behavior
Use human review selectively to catch issues that metrics might miss
Example: Building an Email Agent
For the email agent, we’d want to define and test success across several key
areas:
Tone and Safety: Responses should be professional, respectful, and free of
hallucinated or inappropriate content
Intent & Priority Detection: Emails should be correctly categorized and
prioritized based on sender and content
Tool Usage Efficiency: The agent should trigger only the necessary tools
(e.g., avoid checking the calendar if no scheduling is required)
Draft Quality: Suggested replies should be clear, relevant, and accurate
based on the input context
Step 6: Deploy, Scale, and Refine
Once your MVP is performing reliably, begin expanding its scope—adding new
capabilities, broader use cases, or even multi-agent workflows. For every new
feature or integration, repeat the testing process from Step 5 to ensure you’re
not breaking existing functionality.
When ready, deploy to production in users' hands. LangGraph Platform allows
you to quickly ship, scale, and manage your agents with one-click deployment.
Monitor how people actually use your agent. Tools like LangSmith let you trace
your agent’s actions in real time, making it easier to spot spikes in cost, accuracy
issues, or latency. Real-world usage often differs from your initial assumptions,
and these insights can reveal gaps, surface unexpected needs, and guide
prioritization during your next iteration.
The key is treating launch as the beginning of iteration, not the end of
development.
Example: Building an Email Agent
After deploying our email agent, we might discover unaddressed use cases
through monitoring traffic and common use cases.
These emerging patterns signal opportunities to expand scope. From there, we
can iteratively add new integrations and update our prompts and orchestration
logic—always validating each addition with tests and user feedback before
scaling further.
Conclusion
This process is designed to help you build agents that are grounded in clear use
cases, tested against real examples, and shaped by real-world feedback. It’s not
just about getting an agent to run, but about building something useful, reliable,
and aligned with how people actually work.
Whether you're automating email triage or orchestrating complex workflows,
these six steps offer a practical path from idea to impact. But the work doesn’t
stop at deployment—the best agents are built through iteration.
So start small, stay user-focused, and keep refining.
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