Agentic AI Systems in Production

Allen Smith

GP, Musa Capital · ex-Microsoft operator

Go from AI demos that impress to agent systems that survive production

There's a canyon between an agent that works in your notebook and one that survives real users, real edge cases, and real money on the line. You've felt it: the demo lands, everyone's excited — then it breaks the moment it hits production, and nobody quite knows why.

Crossing that canyon is the single most valuable skill in AI right now. And almost nobody teaches it, because almost nobody has shipped it.

Over six weeks, you'll build a production-grade agent system end to end — architecture, tool orchestration, memory, evaluation harnesses, guardrails, deployment. Not a toy. Your own real project, the kind you can demo to a hiring manager, a CTO, or an investor.

What makes this different: you're learning from an active investor and former big-tech operator who builds agentic systems as part of how Musa Capital develops its thesis. Not theory from someone who read the papers — the patterns that separate funded companies from prototypes.

You'll leave with a system that ships, an eval discipline most teams never build, and the judgment to know what's actually production-ready.

What you’ll learn

Go from building agent demos to shipping production-grade agent systems with the eval rigor, guardrails, and judgment real teams rely on.

  • Apply the core agent loop and patterns — ReAct, plan-execute, reflection — to real problems.

  • Choose single- vs. multi-agent designs, and recognize when an agent is the wrong tool

  • Scope a real agent project with a clear spec: goal, tools, success criteria, failure modes

  • Design tool schemas and structured outputs an LLM can use reliably

  • Apply orchestration patterns — sequential, parallel, router — with error handling and retries

  • Wire multiple real tools into your agent and handle failures gracefully

  • Manage short- and long-term memory and context-window limits

  • Use retrieval and state machines to keep agents coherent across turns

  • Add a persistent memory layer to your own agent

  • Design offline and online eval strategies, including LLM-as-judge and trajectory eval

  • Build a regression suite and test set for your agent

  • Ship an eval harness you run on every change

  • Implement input/output guardrails and prompt-injection defenses

  • Add human-in-the-loop gates, audit logging, and cost controls

  • Make your agent safe to put in front of real customers

  • Instrument agents for observability, tracing, and cost monitoring in production

  • Apply a hyperscaler-aware GTM lens to position and sell agentic products

  • Present a shipped, production-grade agent to peers and an investor lens

Learn directly from Allen

Allen Smith

Allen Smith

General Partner, Musa Capital (ex-Microsoft, NFL, Stanford)

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Who this course is for

  • Technical Founders — shipping agentic features and need production patterns that scale beyond the demo.

  • Engineers & Eng Leads — building with LLMs at companies and need governance, eval, and deployment rigor.

  • Technical PMs — scoping production-grade agents and need to speak the language of what's actually possible.

What's included

Allen Smith

Live sessions

Learn directly from Allen Smith in a real-time, interactive format.

Lifetime access

Go back to course content and recordings whenever you need to.

Community of peers

Stay accountable and share insights with like-minded professionals.

Certificate of completion

Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.

A shipped capstone project

Build your own production-grade agent end to end — architecture, tools, memory, evals, guardrails, deployment. Leave with a system you can demo to a hiring manager, CTO, or investor.

Production-grade patterns

Tool orchestration, memory and state, guardrails, human-in-the-loop, monitoring, and cost control

Investor + operator perspective

Learn from an active VC and former big-tech operator who builds agentic systems as part of Musa Capital's thesis work. Get the patterns that separate funded companies from prototypes.

Hyperscaler-aware GTM

Understand how to position and sell agentic products, and how hyperscaler partnerships (Microsoft, AWS, Google) reshape go-to-market — the commercial lens that makes your technical work fundable.

Maven Guarantee

Your purchase is backed by the Maven Guarantee.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Jul 13—Jul 19

    Jul

    14

    Teach: Agent Architectures & Design Patterns

    Tue 7/1412:00 AM—1:30 AM (UTC)

    Jul

    17

    Workshop: Scoping Your Agent Project

    Fri 7/1712:00 AM—1:30 AM (UTC)

Week 2

Jul 20—Jul 26

    Jul

    21

    Teach: Tool Use, Function Calling & Orchestration

    Tue 7/2112:00 AM—1:30 AM (UTC)

    Jul

    24

    Workshop: Building Your First Tool-Using Agent

    Fri 7/2412:00 AM—1:30 AM (UTC)

Schedule

Live sessions

3 hrs / week

    • Tue, Jul 14

      12:00 AM—1:30 AM (UTC)

    • Fri, Jul 17

      12:00 AM—1:30 AM (UTC)

    • Tue, Jul 21

      12:00 AM—1:30 AM (UTC)

Projects

1 hr / week

Frequently asked questions

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Reimbursement

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Everything L&D needs: email template, receipts, and certificate of completion.

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Team discount

Learn with your teammates

Save 20%+ when 2 or more teammates enroll in the same cohort.

Save 20%+ with a team

Private cohort

Run a cohort for your org

A dedicated cohort with a custom schedule and curriculum, tailored to your team.

Book a private cohort

$2,750

USD

Jul 14Aug 21
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