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Let’s Create Our First Agent Using smolagents

In the last section, we learned how we can create Agents from scratch using Python code, and we saw just how tedious that process can be. Fortunately, many Agent libraries simplify this work by handling much of the heavy lifting for you.

In this tutorial, you’ll create your very first Agent capable of performing actions such as image generation, web search, time zone checking and much more!

You will also publish your agent on a Hugging Face Space so you can share it with friends and colleagues.

Let’s get started!

##
What is smolagents?

To make this Agent, we’re going to use `smolagents`, a library that provides a framework for developing your agents with ease.

This lightweight library is designed for simplicity, but it abstracts away much of the complexity of building an Agent, allowing you to focus on designing your agent’s behavior.

We’re going to get deeper into smolagents in the next Unit. Meanwhile, you can also check this blog post or the library’s repo in GitHub.

In short, `smolagents` is a library that focuses on codeAgent, a kind of agent that performs “Actions” through code blocks, and then “Observes” results by executing the code.

Here is an example of what we’ll build!

We provided our agent with an Image generation tool and asked it to generate an image of a cat.

The agent inside `smolagents` is going to have the same behaviors as the custom one we built previously: it’s going to think, act and observe in cycle until it reaches a final answer:

Exciting, right?

##
Let’s build our Agent!

To start, duplicate this Space: https://huggingface.co/spaces/agents-course/First_agent_template

> Thanks to Aymeric for this template! 🙌

Duplicating this space means creating a local copy on your own profile:

After duplicating the Space, you’ll need to add your Hugging Face API token so your agent can access the model API:

1. First, get your Hugging Face token from https://hf.co/settings/tokens with permission for inference, if you don’t already have one
2. Go to your duplicated Space and click on the Settings tab
3. Scroll down to the Variables and Secrets section and click New Secret
4. Create a secret with the name `HF_TOKEN` and paste your token as the value
5. Click Save to store your token securely

Throughout this lesson, the only file you will need to modify is the (currently incomplete) “app.py”. You can see here the original one in the template. To find yours, go to your copy of the space, then click the `Files` tab and then on `app.py` in the directory listing.

Let’s break down the code together:

- The file begins with some simple but necessary library imports

    from smolagents import CodeAgent, DuckDuckGoSearchTool, FinalAnswerTool, HfApiModel, load_tool, tool
    import datetime
    import requests
    import pytz
    import yaml

As outlined earlier, we will directly use the CodeAgent class from smolagents.

###
The Tools

Now let’s get into the tools! If you want a refresher about tools, don’t hesitate to go back to the Tools section of the course.

    @tool
    def my_custom_tool(arg1:str, arg2:int)-> str: # it's important to specify the return type
        # Keep this format for the tool description / args description but feel free to modify the tool
        """A tool that does nothing yet
        Args:
            arg1: the first argument
            arg2: the second argument
        """
        return "What magic will you build ?"

    @tool
    def get_current_time_in_timezone(timezone: str) -> str:
        """A tool that fetches the current local time in a specified timezone.
        Args:
            timezone: A string representing a valid timezone (e.g., 'America/New_York').
        """
        try:
            # Create timezone object
            tz = pytz.timezone(timezone)
            # Get current time in that timezone
            local_time = datetime.datetime.now(tz).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
            return f"The current local time in {timezone} is: {local_time}"
        except Exception as e:
            return f"Error fetching time for timezone '{timezone}': {str(e)}"

The Tools are what we are encouraging you to build in this section! We give you two examples:

1. A non-working dummy Tool that you can modify to make something useful.
2. An actually working Tool that gets the current time somewhere in the world.

To define your tool it is important to:

1. Provide input and output types for your function, like in `get_current_time_in_timezone(timezone: str) -> str:`
2. A well formatted docstring. `smolagents` is expecting all the arguments to have a textual description in the docstring.

###
The Agent

It uses `Qwen/Qwen2.5-Coder-32B-Instruct` as the LLM engine. This is a very capable model that we’ll access via the serverless API.

    final_answer = FinalAnswerTool()
    model = HfApiModel(
        max_tokens=2096,
        temperature=0.5,
        model_id='Qwen/Qwen2.5-Coder-32B-Instruct',
        custom_role_conversions=None,
    )

    with open("prompts.yaml", 'r') as stream:
        prompt_templates = yaml.safe_load(stream)

    # We're creating our CodeAgent
    agent = CodeAgent(
        model=model,
        tools=[final_answer], # add your tools here (don't remove final_answer)
        max_steps=6,
        verbosity_level=1,
        grammar=None,
        planning_interval=None,
        name=None,
        description=None,
        prompt_templates=prompt_templates
    )

    GradioUI(agent).launch()

This Agent still uses the `InferenceClient` we saw in an earlier section behind the HfApiModel class!

We will give more in-depth examples when we present the framework in Unit 2. For now, you need to focus on adding new tools to the list of tools using the `tools` parameter of your Agent.

For example, you could use the `DuckDuckGoSearchTool` that was imported in the first line of the code, or you can examine the `image_generation_tool` that is loaded from the Hub later in the code.

Adding tools will give your agent new capabilities, try to be creative here!

###
The System Prompt

The agent’s system prompt is stored in a seperate `prompts.yaml` file. This file contains predefined instructions that guide the agent’s behavior.

Storing prompts in a YAML file allows for easy customization and reuse across different agents or use cases.

You can check the Space’s file structure to see where the `prompts.yaml` file is located and how it’s organized within the project.

The complete “app.py”:

    from smolagents import CodeAgent, DuckDuckGoSearchTool, HfApiModel, load_tool, tool
    import datetime
    import requests
    import pytz
    import yaml
    from tools.final_answer import FinalAnswerTool

    from Gradio_UI import GradioUI

    # Below is an example of a tool that does nothing. Amaze us with your creativity!
    @tool
    def my_custom_tool(arg1:str, arg2:int)-> str: # it's important to specify the return type
        # Keep this format for the tool description / args description but feel free to modify the tool
        """A tool that does nothing yet
        Args:
            arg1: the first argument
            arg2: the second argument
        """
        return "What magic will you build ?"

    @tool
    def get_current_time_in_timezone(timezone: str) -> str:
        """A tool that fetches the current local time in a specified timezone.
        Args:
            timezone: A string representing a valid timezone (e.g., 'America/New_York').
        """
        try:
            # Create timezone object
            tz = pytz.timezone(timezone)
            # Get current time in that timezone
            local_time = datetime.datetime.now(tz).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
            return f"The current local time in {timezone} is: {local_time}"
        except Exception as e:
            return f"Error fetching time for timezone '{timezone}': {str(e)}"

    final_answer = FinalAnswerTool()
        model = HfApiModel(
        max_tokens=2096,
        temperature=0.5,
        model_id='Qwen/Qwen2.5-Coder-32B-Instruct',
        custom_role_conversions=None,
    )

    # Import tool from Hub
    image_generation_tool = load_tool("agents-course/text-to-image", trust_remote_code=True)

    # Load system prompt from prompt.yaml file
    with open("prompts.yaml", 'r') as stream:
        prompt_templates = yaml.safe_load(stream)

    agent = CodeAgent(
        model=model,
        tools=[final_answer], # add your tools here (don't remove final_answer)
        max_steps=6,
        verbosity_level=1,
        grammar=None,
        planning_interval=None,
        name=None,
        description=None,
        prompt_templates=prompt_templates # Pass system prompt to CodeAgent
    )

    GradioUI(agent).launch()

Your Goal is to get familiar with the Space and the Agent.

Currently, the agent in the template does not use any tools, so try to provide it with some of the pre-made ones or even make some new tools yourself!

We are eagerly waiting for your amazing agents output in the discord channel #agents-course-showcase!

Congratulations, you’ve built your first Agent! Don’t hesitate to share it with your friends and colleagues.

Since this is your first try, it’s perfectly normal if it’s a little buggy or slow. In future units, we’ll learn how to build even better Agents.

The best way to learn is to try, so don’t hesitate to update it, add more tools, try with another model, etc.

In the next section, you’re going to fill the final Quiz and get your certificate!

< > Update on GitHub