Meet your first agent

What you will build

By the end of this course you will have an agent that reads a public web page and writes you a short summary. It is a small job, but it uses everything that matters: instructions, a tool, a run, a trace, a budget and a safety net.

What an agent is

An agent is a saved job. It has:

• Instructions: what to do, in plain language.
• A model: Fast, Smart or Code.
• Tools: the only things it is allowed to do.
• Triggers: how it starts (by hand, on a schedule, or from a web address).
• A budget: a dollar limit per run and per month.

Every time it starts, that is a run, and every run keeps a step-by-step record. Anything that sends, shares, spends or installs waits for your approval.

Step 1: Sign in

Open agents.pgbhub.com and choose Get started. You sign in with your PGBHub account. There is no separate Agents password. The bar at the top shows five pages: Agents, Approvals, Usage, AI keys and Settings.

Step 2: Add your AI key

Agents need an AI provider. For most accounts you bring your own key, and your provider bills you for what your runs use.

1. Create an API key on your AI provider's website. Make one just for PGB.
2. Open AI keys.
3. Under Add a key, choose the Provider, paste the Key and choose Check and save.
4. Choose Test connection. You want to see "Test passed: your agents can reach a model."

The key is checked before it is stored, stored encrypted, and only its last four characters are ever shown again. If you skip this step, a run will stop with "Add your own AI provider key to use this feature."

Step 3: Create a blank agent

1. Open Agents and choose Create your first agent (or New agent).
2. Under Blank agent type the Name "Page summariser".
3. Choose Create agent.

You land on the agent's page. Look around before changing anything. The main area has Run now, Instructions, Tools and Triggers. On the right are Budget, Recent runs and Memory, and at the bottom a Delete agent button.

A blank agent starts with a placeholder instruction, the Smart model, no tools and a manual trigger. It cannot do anything yet, which is exactly what you want from a safe starting point.

Step 4: Peek at the Marketplace route

Go back to New agent and scroll to From the marketplace. This is the other way to start: choose Use this agent on a ready-made one such as Daily Digest or Invoice Chaser. We will use this later. Stay with your blank agent in this course.

Try it yourself

1. Add your AI key and run Test connection.
2. Create the "Page summariser" agent.
3. Find the Budget panel and note the defaults.

Recap

• An agent is instructions plus a model, tools, triggers and a budget.
• You sign in with PGBHub and add your own AI key on AI keys.
• A blank agent can do nothing until you give it instructions and tools.
• You can also start from a Marketplace package with Use this agent.