Leeds Business School students build their own AI agents

Business students are about to graduate into workplaces that AI is changing fast, and employers are looking for people who can already use it. Leeds University Business School had run one series with AI Lab, where every team built one agent. This time they wanted more building, tied to real business problems, for a much bigger cohort: 218 students, most new to AI. The aim was for every student to leave with something they had built and could talk about to an employer.

• Two three-hour hands-on workshops on 21 October 2026
• A pre-session video so students arrived knowing the basics
• A printed Use Case Design Spec for every student
• A live agent build in Microsoft Copilot Agent Builder, followed by the whole room
• A team agent for a business brief, built and pitched to the room
• Three AI Lab volunteers helping on the tables

Over 100 students packed into one room, with another group of similar size earlier the same day. Only a small number had ever built an AI agent. Most had only used chat tools. The facilitators told them nobody in the room was an expert, not even them. Then they built. Most of the room had a working agent on their own laptop, following along live. A student stood up and explained, correctly, how several agents can work together under a lead one, and got a round of applause. Then came the fun part. Ten teams of around ten, most meeting for the first time, had half an hour to pick a problem from a bank's brief, design an agent for it and build it. Pitch order was decided by a spin of the wheel. One agent sorted customer complaints by risk and removed the duplicates. Another scored a competitor on how reliable and responsive it was. The winners built Campus Cash, a budgeting tool for first-year students: type in an £80 night out and the week's budget updates. The judges said they could actually see a bank building it. Not everything worked. Screens dropped, a demo stalled, and one team's agent failed in front of the room, so they pitched without it. The room still clapped every team up and the vibe was buzzing!