Journal · AI · Sep 18, 2026
Building your first AI agent: a practical guide
Start with one tool, one job and a set of evals. Everything else can wait.
By The Nexora Team
Most agent projects fail because they try to do everything at once.
Start narrow
Pick one job with a clear definition of done. "Summarise new support tickets and tag them" beats "handle support".
Give it one good tool
Tools are where agents get their power. A single, well-described tool with strict input validation is worth ten vague ones.
Write evals first
Before you tune a prompt, write twenty examples of good output. Now every change is measurable.
Log every step
When something goes wrong, you'll want to replay exactly what the model saw.
