AI Engineer June 2026 Meetup

Two talks this month, both about what it actually takes to build agents that hold up.

First, Justin Kaiser on Hands on with Deep Agents in LangSmith. What separates a "deep agent" from the basic tool-calling loops most of us have built? In this hands-on session, Justin defines deep agents and their building blocks: the harness that wraps the model, built-in planning and filesystem tools, pluggable storage backends, subagents that isolate work in their own context, human-in-the-loop approval, and long-term memory — the pieces that let an agent tackle multi-step work without drowning in its own context. Then he builds one live with LangChain's Deep Agents library, starting from a single create_deep_agent() call and progressively adding web search, subagents, and persistent memory to turn it into a working research agent. You'll come away knowing what deep agents are, when to reach for one, and how to start building your own.

Want to follow along during the hands-on portion? Download the repo at https://github.com/BlankMetal/ai-engineer-2026-july-langsmith-deepagents and run the setup steps beforehand. Bring your questions.

Then Lyndon Carlson on Cognita: Building an Agent Engineering Workbench. Cognita is an end-to-end agent engineering workbench, and this talk zooms in on its governance layer — how the platform enforces policies, guardrails, and evals to keep agents safe, compliant, and reliable in production. Along the way Lyndon covers the broader challenges of building a workbench like this and how engineering workflows are evolving as agents become first-class infrastructure, then closes with a live demo of Cognita showing how his team put those ideas into practice.

Come for two complementary angles — building a deep agent hands-on, and the governance and tooling that make agent engineering safe and repeatable — and stick around to talk it through with the room.

Agenda
Wednesday, July 8, 2026
🥨 4:00 PM – Doors open + snacks and networking
👋 4:30 PM – Welcome and intro remarks
🎬 4:40 PM – Justin Kaiser presents: Hands on with Deep Agents in LangSmith
🎬 5:10 PM – Lyndon Carlson presents: Cognita: Building an Agent Engineering Workbench
💬 5:40 PM – Networking and discussion
🚗 6:00 PM – Go home and build

Address
Studio Common Area
10 2nd St NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413
See Meetup photo album Studio Common Area for map and photos.

Parking
Multiple parking options nearby:

• Studio parking ramp
• Street parking
• Parking ramp across 2nd St

Food + Drink
Food and beverages provided at 4:00 PM courtesy of our sponsor, Blank Metal.

What to Bring
Just yourself! We've got everything covered.

Important to Know
Registration is free but required — please RSVP so we can plan for capacity.

Accessibility
The Studio Common Area is wheelchair accessible.