Lesson 1: Search the agent drives, step by step

Module 9 · Lesson 1 · About 50 minutes · Needs: Module 3 (the tools) and Module 5 (Lesson 1, the loop); embeddings from the AI Engineering course help

The situation

It is Monday 25 May 2026, week 7. Priya is reading request R-1003 again. Aisha Rahman writes: "I've changed my mind about the kettle. Please refund me." Her kettle, order 5730, has shipped but not arrived.

A good reply needs three facts from the help centre: a shipped order cannot be cancelled, it can be returned once it arrives, and when the refund is paid. Module 3's search_help_centre matches words; searched with hers, it returns HC-01 and HC-02 and nothing about cancelling. Priya asks: "Why does it stop at the first thing it finds?"

This lesson turns search into something the agent drives: it writes its own queries, follows what it reads, and stops for a reason code can check.