Agentic Design Patterns – A Hands-On Guide to Building Intelligent Systems by Google’s Antonio Gulli

Artificial Intelligence is entering a new era. No longer limited to answering questions or generating text, today’s systems are evolving into autonomous agents – intelligent entities that can reason, plan, collaborate, and act. This shift requires a structured way of thinking about design and implementation.

Antonio Gulli’s Agentic Design Patterns: A Hands-On Guide to Building Intelligent Systems provides exactly that. Spanning 424 pages, the book introduces a comprehensive collection of design patterns for AI agents, supported with hands-on Python code. It is both a reference guide and a practical manual for developers, researchers and leaders who want to master the agentic approach.

What Makes This Book Stand Out?

Much like software engineering has long relied on design patterns to solve recurring challenges, this book introduces agentic design patterns for AI development. These patterns help developers:

• Structure intelligent systems systematically
• Combine multiple AI capabilities like reasoning, planning, and tool use
• Manage memory, context, and adaptation
• Ensure safety, alignment, and robustness
• Scale from single agents to multi-agent ecosystems

The book is divided into four major parts plus appendices, covering everything from core agentic principles to advanced scaling strategies. It balances conceptual clarity with hands-on Python code, ensuring readers not only understand but can also build.

Part One – Core Patterns (103 pages)

• Chapter 1: Prompt Chaining
• Chapter 2: Routing
• Chapter 3: Parallelization
• Chapter 4: Reflection
• Chapter 5: Tool Use
• Chapter 6: Planning
• Chapter 7: Multi-Agent

Part Two – Intelligence & Adaptation (61 pages)

• Chapter 8: Memory Management
• Chapter 9: Learning and Adaptation
• Chapter 10: Model Context Protocol (MCP)
• Chapter 11: Goal Setting and Monitoring

Part Three – Reliability & Human Alignment (34 pages)

• Chapter 12: Exception Handling and Recovery
• Chapter 13: Human-in-the-Loop
• Chapter 14: Knowledge Retrieval (RAG)

Part Four – Scaling Agentic Systems (114 pages)

• Chapter 15: Inter-Agent Communication (A2A)
• Chapter 16: Resource-Aware Optimization
• Chapter 17: Reasoning Techniques
• Chapter 18: Guardrails / Safety Patterns
• Chapter 19: Evaluation and Monitoring
• Chapter 20: Prioritization
• Chapter 21: Exploration and Discovery

Appendices (74 pages)

• Appendix A: Advanced Prompting Techniques
• Appendix B: From GUI to Real-World Environment
• Appendix C: Quick Overview of Agentic Frameworks
• Appendix D: Building an Agent with AgentSpace (online)
• Appendix E: AI Agents on the CLI (online)
• Appendix F: Inside the Agents’ Reasoning Engines
• Appendix G: Coding Agents

Who Should Read This Book?

• AI Developers & Engineers who want a hands-on coding guide for building real-world agents.
• Researchers & Data Scientists seeking to explore reasoning, planning, and collaboration techniques.
• Technology Leaders & Innovators looking for a structured understanding of agentic systems and their potential.

Whether you are experimenting with LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI or custom frameworks, the design patterns are framework-agnostic, making them widely reusable.

Read Agentic Design Patterns for Free

You can access a free version of the book here:
Read on Google Docs

Conclusion

Agentic Design Patterns by Antonio Gulli is more than just an AI textbook, it’s a practical guide for building the next generation of intelligent systems. By combining theory, structured design patterns and executable code, the book equips readers to move from simple prompt engineering to fully autonomous agentic AI systems.

Whether you’re a developer experimenting with LangChain, a researcher exploring multi-agent collaboration, or a technology leader shaping strategy, this book offers the framework and tools you need to stay ahead in the agentic era of AI.

Get your copy here: Agentic Design Patterns: A Hands-On Guide to Building Intelligent Systems

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