Semantic Layer Agents Empowering Business Workflows — Day 1 of 2: Build Smarter with AI Functions, Semantic Layer & Cortex Search

Most teams that experiment with AI agents never get them into a business workflow. The demo works, then it stalls, because the agent has no governed data foundation to reason over and no path from prototype to something the business actually uses every day.

Cortex Agents run directly on your Snowflake data and the semantic layer you already own, so the answers are governed and traceable. Day 2 of this two-day hands-on lab takes the foundation from Day 1 and turns it into deployed agents, CoWork workflows, and API-accessible endpoints your applications can call.

This is a hands-on lab, not a slide deck. We will build and deploy a Cortex Agent on Snowflake data, wire it into CoWork for AI-assisted data workflows, connect Managed MCP and custom MCP servers, and call the Agents API and Cortex REST API for inference. Roughly 30 to 45 minutes of guided lab work plus open Q&A.

You will leave with a working agent you built yourself, a clear picture of how agents, MCP, and the Agents API fit into your existing applications and workflows, and a realistic path to production. Every attendee who wants to go further gets an optional follow-up hands-on working session with a Snowflake technical expert from their account team, aimed at producing a POC artifact you can show your own leadership.