On Saturday, February 8, the Hands-on AI Agent Development Workshop brought together over 20 students in a pilot initiative to gain hands-on experience with autonomous multi-agent systems using CrewAI.

As AI and automation continue to reshape industries globally, Pakistan must build local AI expertise to keep pace with global advancements. This initial workshop served as a testbed for AI upskilling, equipping students with practical, hands-on AI development experience.

Bridging the Gap: A Workshop Designed for AI Students

Recognizing the gap between AI theory and real-world application, this pilot workshop prioritized interactive learning over passive lectures.

What Made This Workshop Unique?

• Hands-on Google Colab coding sessions

• Practical multi-agent AI development

• Experimenting with AI workflow automation

Instead of traditional teaching methods, participants actively coded AI workflows and explored multi-agent collaboration. This hands-on approach bridged the gap between AI theory and real-world implementation.

Key Takeaways from the Workshop

Since this was an introductory session, we focused on fundamental concepts and hands-on practice with CrewAI. Participants learned:

The difference between AI agents & AI assistants 🤖
How to develop multi-agent systems for research, summarization, and quiz generation
Practical AI tools: Groq (for LLMs), Serper (for automated search)

Using a Jupyter Notebook template, students built an AI-powered system with:
🔹 A research agent (automating web search)
🔹 A summarizer (condensing key insights)
🔹 A quiz generator (testing knowledge automatically)

This hands-on approach helped students understand agent collaboration and automation, using freely available AI tools.