Enterprise-Grade AI Agent Engineering Practice: Course Business Agent Architecture Driven by Spring AI

This article introduces an open-source AI agent engineering project that builds a complete course business agent system based on the Spring AI framework and Java technology stack. It demonstrates the engineering implementation of core capabilities such as intent recognition, multi-agent routing, tool invocation, and SSE streaming responses, providing a reproducible technical solution for AI application development in the Java ecosystem and addressing the engineering challenges of transitioning agents from prototypes to production-grade applications.

AI agents need to have capabilities of perception (intent recognition), reasoning (task planning), action (tool invocation), and memory (session management). However, transitioning them into production systems faces issues such as architectural complexity (multi-agent collaboration, tool invocation retries), performance requirements (streaming latency, high-concurrency resource management), maintainability (configuration/logging/error handling), and integration challenges (connecting with existing business systems).

System Architecture

• Core Workflow: User query → ChatController → RouteAgent (intent recognition) → Sub-agents (recommendation/consultation/purchase/knowledge) → Tool invocation → SSE streaming return
• Layered Architecture: Access layer (ChatController supports SSE), Routing layer (RouteAgent distributes requests), Business layer (4 sub-agents), Tool layer (CourseTools/OrderTools encapsulate microservice calls), Infrastructure layer (Redis session memory)

Key Technologies

• Intent recognition: RouteAgent matches predefined intent categories via keywords/context
• Tool invocation: Spring AI Tool annotation defines tools, binds to ChatClient, automatically parses parameters and executes
• SSE streaming response: Events like DATA (text fragment), PARAM (structured result), STOP (end signal)
• Session management: RedisChatMemory implements distributed session storage and context maintenance

Core Scenarios

Covers the complete user journey of course recommendation, consultation, purchase order placement, and knowledge Q&A

Frontend Interaction

React Chat UI supports session management, streaming display, attachment upload, voice interaction, and structured card rendering

Engineering Practice

• Quick start: One-click script to start backend services, frontend development server, and demo data
• Modular code: Module division like web/chat-ui (frontend), tjxt/tj-aigc (business agents), etc.
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions implements frontend and backend code checks and testing

Application Scenarios

Intelligent consultant for online education platforms, knowledge Q&A for enterprise training systems, e-commerce customer service support, technical interview portfolio display

Technology Selection

Reasons for choosing Spring AI: Abstract consistency (unified ChatClient interface), ecosystem integration (seamless connection with Spring Boot/Cloud), enterprise-level features (auto-configuration/monitoring), Java ecosystem adaptation

Expansion Reserve

Reserved MCP (Model Context Protocol) extension slot to support future third-party tool ecosystem integration

Current Limitations

• Model dependency: Mainly supports OpenAI API; adaptation to other models requires additional development
• Complex planning: The routing + tool mode lacks flexibility for multi-step reasoning tasks
• Security control: Production environment needs to improve permissions/input filtering/output review

Improvement Directions

• Multi-model support: Access Claude/Gemini/local models via Spring AI abstract interfaces
• Advanced agent mode: Introduce ReAct/Plan-and-Execute to enhance complex task processing
• RAG enhancement: Integrate vector databases to support private knowledge base answers
• Observability: Integrate LangSmith/Langfuse to implement call chain tracking and monitoring