20 pages, A4. 12 chapters. Every chapter ends with a checklist and a try-it exercise.
Book / The ForgingStack Field Guide
How to Create
an AI Agent
A practical guide to building a real working agent for $0.
This book is for you if you want to build an AI agent that actually does something — and you want to do it with no money, no hype, and no pretending. You do not need a computer science degree. You do not need a cloud budget. By the end of it you will have built a working agent: a program that takes a job, figures out what to do, uses tools to do it, remembers what happened, and checks its own work before it calls anything done.
What “agent” means in this book
- See — it reads something: a message, a file, a web page, a number.
- Think — it decides what to do next.
- Act — it uses a tool to do it: search, write a file, send a message.
- Remember — it writes down what happened, so the next run starts smarter.
- Check — it verifies the result against something real before it claims success.
If a program does all five, it is an agent. If it only chats, it is a chatbot. If it only runs once and forgets, it is a script.
Three rules run through the book
- Proof first. Every claim must be checkable — a link you can open, a file you can read, a number you can re-derive.
- $0 means $0. Everything is built on free tiers, free tools, and work you do yourself. A paid step is never presented as if it costs nothing.
- Nothing important happens without approval. The agent does not publish, spend, send, or delete anything important on its own say-so. The owner approves the exact thing first.
Inside the book
Twelve chapters. One working agent.
Read Chapters 1 to 3 before you touch any software. From Chapter 4 on, build as you read. The book closes with a 30-day build plan and appendices: checklists, templates, glossary.
- 01 What an agent actually is
- 02 The anatomy: brain, tools, memory, gates
- 03 Choose the job before the model
- 04 Your first agent in an afternoon
- 05 Prompts that hold under pressure
- 06 Tools: hands without giving away the house
- 07 Memory that survives the session
- 08 Testing an agent you do not trust yet
- 09 From one agent to a team
- 10 Gates, guardrails, and the kill switch
- 11 Shipping for $0 and staying $0
- 12 The ForgingStack way: proof first
How it reaches you
The book is finished. The price is not set yet.
How the book reaches you — free download or paid — is still being decided. There is no download and no payment link on this page until that call is made. What is already running is the companion blog: one tips post per chapter, as they publish.
Watch
The trailer, in 28 seconds.
28 seconds, narrated. Tap to play — sound on.
Full circle
The book, the blog, and the work.
The blog turns each chapter into a tips post. The social channels carry the book and the blog out. And the four tools below are what the book's method built — each one checks its work and leaves a receipt.