Inventing the future of applied AI: Inside Sierra University
Hundreds of companies have now built AI agents on Sierra that do everything from refinance homes, provide roadside assistance, process returns, explain insurance deductibles, deliver furniture, and fix printers.
Applied AI is a new domain, and there’s lots to learn. A year ago, we started Sierra University, a hands-on program from which hundreds of people from dozens of companies have already graduated. They leave fluent in the design, configuration, and deployment of production-ready AI agents.
From fundamentals to fluency
Each cohort spends three immersive days learning how to design, build, and deploy production-ready agents that reflect their company’s brand and business.
Day 1: Building the foundations
Participants start by exploring what makes an effective agent tick: how Knowledge, Tools, Journeys, Conditions, Rules, and Policies come together to define the right behavior.
The work begins in Agent Studio, Sierra’s no-code environment, with joint participation from both technical and non-technical teams. The best agents are built by collaboration between CX, operations, and engineering teams — and having everyone in the same room helps that partnership.
By the end of Day 1, attendees are often surprised by how fun and creative the process feels. Over dinner, conversations turn to the excitement of crafting a single agent that can represent their brand across any channel.
Day 2: Integrating with systems
The second day bridges theory and practice, answering the question on every team’s mind: how do I get this agent to work with my systems? Technical teams learn how to authenticate with APIs, hand off conversations to live agents, and fine-tune their agent’s voice and responses.
Most of the day centers on Sierra’s Agent SDK. Having mastered Agent Studio, participants dive deeper into agent control flow, model optimization, and state management. They also learn good tool design: clear inputs and outputs, minimal surface area, and knowledge that’s fast to index and easy to keep current.
"The Sierra SDK is flexible, intuitive and quite powerful. What stood out to me was how quickly everything came together. By day three of Sierra University, I was already building what felt like production-ready agents. With open-source tooling, that kind of fluency would have taken weeks."
- Senior Data Scientist, Car insurance company
Day 3: Building together
On the final day, teams bring everything together. They build agents for their own use cases, stress-test them in simulated environments, and refine their work until it’s ready for deployment. After presenting to their class, each cohort closes with a Sierra tradition — a ceremonial alphorn blow — marking not just a graduation, but the moment their agents are ready for the world.
"I showed both of the agents I built to our VP of Engineering and five others. They loved it. They were amazed I’d built them myself."
- CX leader, Telecommunications company
A shared learning experience
Participants leave with a common language, a working agent, and a deeper sense of agency over how AI shows up for their customers. In just three days, we’ve had participants build things they’d never have imagined:
- A CX leader at a streaming service built an agent that could look up dynamic content to share whether certain shows are available.
- A developer at a large property management company created an agent that drives intake on repair issues, including image processing.
- An engineer at a workforce management company built a playful, text-based RPG agent that lets customers log hours as if they were playing in a fantasy world.
What starts as a workshop often becomes the foundation for real production work. Many of these projects have since gone live — solving problems teams hardly knew existed at the start.
“Often when working with AI and customer experience teams, it can be nerve-wracking — ’What does this mean for what I'll be doing in the future? But after going through Sierra University, I've seen our customer experience team energized and actually building on their own to help improve our agent. That's been pretty awesome.”
A movement in the making
We designed Sierra University because building great agents isn’t a solo act. It’s a craft. And like any craft, it grows stronger when shared.
As we look ahead, we’re expanding Sierra University globally — bringing this community of builders to new cities, new industries, and new teams eager to shape the future of AI together. If you’re interested, please contact your Sierra account executive to learn more.
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