Build a Simple “Research Agent”

We’ve been building AI applications using the OpenAI SDK directly, making API calls, handling responses, and managing conversations manually. Now, let’s step into the world of AI agents: autonomous systems that can think, plan, and take actions to accomplish complex tasks.

By the end of this lesson, you’ll understand how to build a simple yet powerful “Research Agent” that can automatically search the web, analyze information, and provide comprehensive research reports. This will be done all while the agent manages its own workflow and decision-making process. It resembles a kind of mini OpenAI deep research.

Why AI agents matter?

Think about the difference between a calculator and a personal assistant. A calculator waits for you to input each step: “Add 5 to 3, now multiply by 2, now subtract 1.” A personal assistant understands the goal: “Help me figure out my budget for next month,” and then takes all the necessary steps to complete that task.

What we’ve built so far requires us to control every step of the interaction. Each API call was explicit and predetermined, and we handled all the logic and decision-making. Additionally, a significant caveat was that we were limited to single-turn or simple multi-turn conversations.

AI agents can do all of that one step beyond. They can: ...