Spring AI: There and Back Again

Every great journey begins with a single step out the front door. For Spring developers, that step is a ChatClient and a prompt. Simple, safe, and surprisingly powerful. But the road goes ever on, and what starts as a quiet conversation with a language model quickly leads somewhere much bigger.

This is that adventure. We'll set out from the Shire with the basics of Spring AI and chart a course through stranger lands. We'll teach our application to use tools, the way any good traveler learns to use what's in their pack. We'll cross into the wider world through MCP, connecting our Spring Boot app to everything around it. And at the edge of the map, we'll meet the agents. Applications that can think, plan, and act on their own.

Along the way you'll pick up working code, a clear mental model of how the pieces of Spring AI fit together, and a sense of where each one earns its place in a real application. No toy examples. No waving at concepts from a distance. Just a Spring Boot app that grows up a little at every stop on the road.

You'll come back the way all good adventurers do. With stories to tell, a pack full of new tools, and a map for wherever you want to go next.