Building Agents with Amazon Nova Act and MCP - Du'An Lightfoot, Amazon (Full Workshop)

3.2K views · Jun 21, 2025 · 86:19 min · Watch on YouTube ↗

Takeaway

AWS's Strands + Nova Act + MCP combo lets developers build browser-control agents in tens of lines, with Q CLI as the default productivity surface.

Summary

Du'An Lightfoot and Banjo Obayomi (AWS) run a workshop building agentic systems with Amazon Nova Act (research-preview browser-control model) and MCP.
Three AWS agent approaches: Amazon Q (specialized, in console/IDE/CLI), Amazon Bedrock Agents (fully managed), and Strands Agents (DIY, open-source, supports LiteLLM for multi-provider) — speaker built multi-agent in under 50 lines.
Strands agents are composed of prompt + LLM + tools (e.g., a get_weather function decorated as a tool); Nova Act adds browser actions like 'search Amazon.com for widgets and add to cart' via SDK or MCP.
Speaker built personal MCP servers (Obsidian for documentation, bookmark manager) and uses them via Q CLI to retrieve bookmarks by date.
Workshop modules: (1) call Nova Act API directly, (2) wrap Nova Act in MCP server, (3) combine in Strands agent end-to-end.

awsmcpstrands

Original description

In this 2-hour workshop, participants will gain practical hands-on experience building sophisticated AI agents using Amazon's agent technologies. You'll learn to build agents that can navigate the web like humans, perform complex multi-step tasks, and leverage specialized tools through natural language commands. You’ll explore Amazon Nova Act for reliable web navigation, Model Context Protocol (MCP) for connecting agents to external data sources and APIs, and Amazon Bedrock Agents for orchestrating complex workflows. Through guided exercises, you'll create agents capable of retrieving information and taking action across web applications, all through natural language interactions. By the end of this workshop, you'll have the practical skills to build AI agents that can browse websites, interact with web interfaces, and solve multi-step problems by combining these powerful Amazon technologies.

About Du'An Lightfoot
Du’An is an Air Force veteran and Sr. Developer Advocate at AWS. He has 10+ years of designing, implementing, and supporting enterprise infrastructures. At AWS he uses his experience and knowledge to help customers learn and build on AWS.

Recorded at the AI Engineer World's Fair in San Francisco. Stay up to date on our upcoming events and content by joining our newsletter here: https://www.ai.engineer/newsletter