AI Learning Series - From Prompts to Harness

🗓 6 months | 📚 6 hands-on sessions | 🛠 we build every session | 🏆 Demo Day finale

🚨 IMPORTANT: To join, RSVP here: 📋 https://forms.gle/EmEZJ7yGbff5LPRc9 and join the conversation in #ai-learning-series on the WCC Slack.

Women Coding Community invites you to the 2026 relaunch of our AI Learning Series. This year we're doing it differently: one hands-on session a month, no heavy slides, real tools and real code you can use at work the next morning.

👩🏽‍💻 ABOUT WOMEN CODING COMMUNITY
We empower women in tech through education, mentorship & career services. Join us for workshops, events, and networking opportunities! 🌐 womencodingcommunity.com

📜 Code of Conduct: We foster an inclusive, supportive community. Read our Code of Conduct.

🚀 Build agents that actually do the work! Over six months we build an AI agent's harness from the ground up — the instructions, skills, tools and guardrails that turn a capable model into an agent that gets things done — then we close the loop so your agents run while you sleep ✨🤖

📅 First session: Tuesday, 21st July 2026, then the 3rd Tuesday of every month through December. Don't miss out!

🎯 WHAT'S THIS SERIES ABOUT?
A hands-on, build-along series on modern agent engineering. Every session is live coding: we frame the concept, build it together, and you leave with something that works.

🎓 Finale: Demo Day. In December, community members show 5 to 10 minutes of how they're using their own harness or agents at work.

You'll explore:
✅ Write an Agent Skill once and use it across Antigravity, Claude Code and Google ADK
✅ Give agents tools safely with MCP, permissions and hooks
✅ Self-host a small model and own the endpoint
✅ Split work across specialist sub-agents
✅ Wire AI checks into your CI/CD pipeline without blowing the budget
✅ Close the loop: agents that run on a schedule, unattended
👀 Sneak Peek: Course Repo

💡 HOW IT WORKS?
✔️ One live, hands-on session a month, 3rd Tuesday, 60 minutes
✔️ We build together, minimal slides, debug in the open
✔️ Live Q&A, Slack discussions in #ai-learning-series, recordings for catch-up
✔️ Optional 5 to 10 min community show-and-tell slots (DM Sonika to grab one)

✅ WHAT YOU NEED TO JOIN
🔹 Some Python
🔹 A Google Cloud account (free tier is fine) or an LLM API key
🔹 Antigravity and Claude Code installed (we share a quick setup guide the week before, so live time stays for building)
🔹 Curiosity, entry-level friendly with a clear path to advanced
Come for one session or the whole run!

🏆 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

💡 Session 1: From Prompts to Harness: Build Your Own Agent Skill
📅 21 July 2026
🔹 What a harness is, and the lineage from prompting to harness engineering
🔹 AGENTS.md and portable Agent Skills across tools
🛠 Build: a hand-written AGENTS.md and your first reusable Agent Skill, running across Antigravity, Claude Code and Google ADK

💡 Session 2: Tools & Boundaries: MCP, Plugins, Permissions, Hooks
📅 18 August 2026
🔹 MCP servers and plugins as the agent's hands
🔹 Permissions and hooks as the seatbelt and the un-skippable gate
🛠 Build: a project-scoped MCP plus a pre-commit hook that scans for secrets

💡 Session 3: Small Models in Practice
📅 15 September 2026
🔹 Why self-host, local vs Cloud vs Ollama, cost and privacy
🔹 When a small model with good Skills matches a much bigger one
🛠 Build: stand up a small model and expose a working endpoint you own

💡 Session 4: Sub-Agents & Specialisation
📅 20 October 2026
🔹 Why a focused context beats a stuffed one
🔹 Delegation patterns and graceful failure
🛠 Build: split one real task across specialist sub-agents

💡 Session 5: AI in the SDLC & CI/CD
📅 17 November 2026
🔹 AI code review and checks in your delivery pipeline
🔹 Scoping and securing the runner's API token so a rogue PR can't drain the budget
🛠 Build: an AI check running on your own repo, posting back as PR comments

💡 Session 6: Loop Engineering: Agents That Run While You Sleep + Demo Day
📅 15 December 2026
🔹 From equipping one run (harness) to a self-running cycle (loop)
🔹 Goals, stopping conditions and scheduled tasks
🛠 Build & demo: the "standup radar", one Skill and one cron line, plus community Demo Day