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Building AI Agents in Go
About
About the Book
An agent is a model in a loop. This book has you build the loop.
You write an AI agent in Go one tested piece at a time, with the standard library: `net/http` for the API, `encoding/json/v2` for the wire format, and `context` for deadlines and cancellation. No framework sits between you and the model, so every request, reply, and tool call is code you wrote and can read, and you learn how agents work underneath.
You start with a 30-line loop and finish with an agent that triages crash reports for a small Go web service: it groups the reports by cause, reproduces each cause in a test, fixes what is safe to fix, and files one issue per cause, as a command and as a service.
You'll learn how to:
- Give a model tools it uses well, and see why one sentence in a tool description can decide its next move
- Keep long runs focused and affordable as the context fills up
- Test an agent whose answers vary, and tell a real improvement from chance
- Sandbox what it can touch, resist prompt injection, and ask a person before risky actions
- Survive a crash mid-run without filing anything twice
- Judge any agent framework against the parts you built yourself
Every result is measured. Each number comes from a recorded run, with its models, run count, and date, and the book reports what worked, what didn't, and what each run cost, including the times the obvious design lost. Every example runs offline with no API key, from replies recorded in real runs.
Who it's for: Go developers new to language models. Go basics are enough: no machine learning, no math, and no framework required.
What you finish with:
- `triage`, a crash-triage agent for a Go web service, as a command and as a service
- An eval harness that grades agents with hidden tests across models
- A crash-safe agent loop that resumes without repeating an action
- Your own small library of tools, with sandboxing and human approval
Formats: PDF, 776 pages, in five reading themes (Light, Dark, Tokyo Night, Gruvbox Dark, and Catppuccin Latte), and EPUB. Every update of this edition is free.
The code: every chapter's program, tested with Go's race detector, is free and open source under Apache 2.0 at https://github.com/blackwell-systems/go-agents-book-code. Free guides and a sample are at https://golang-agents.com.
The Go gopher was designed by Renée French (CC BY 4.0). Not affiliated with or endorsed by Google or the Go project.
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Author
About the Author
Dayna Blackwell
Dayna Blackwell is a software architect, technical author, and the founder of Blackwell Systems. A "builder-first" advocate for developer experience, Dayna has shipped 10 open-source production tools ranging from unified secrets management (vaultmux) to modular development frameworks (blackdot), all maintained with the same rigor as the enterprise systems she architects.
With five years of experience in the high-stakes world of enterprise hospitality—designing APIs that serve millions and data pipelines processing billions of events—Dayna specializes in making complex, "high-consequence" systems accessible. She is the author of the 838-page deep dive You Don't Know JSON and a prolific technical writer with over 225,000 lines of published documentation. Dayna is 3x AWS Certified and a specialist in infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CDK, Pulumi) and cloud architecture.
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