AI Makers Lab — Build, experiment and explore with AI

Most people have tried an AI chat window, pasted some code in, and gotten something half-useful back. But the power of AI goes way further nowadays! Claude Code is a different thing entirely: an agent that lives in your terminal, reads your actual codebase, writes your code, runs your tests, and edits your files.
This is a one-hour, hands-off session: you watch, I code. No setup required.

What we'll do
We start with what Claude Code actually is and how it differs from autocomplete and chat assistants. Then we spend most of the hour in a live terminal:

• Building something small from scratch, including the part where it breaks and we fix it.
• Dropping into an unfamiliar codebase and asking it to explain how things work, then adding a feature that follows the existing patterns

I'll show the three things that separate people who get real value out of this from people who give up after a week: giving it proper context, making it plan before it writes, and verifying what comes back.

Who this is for
Developers who write code regularly and are curious whether the agentic approach is real or hype, and non-technical people who want to start bulding with AI.

What do I need
You don't need any prior AI tooling experience. Nothing to install. Just enthusiasm and curiosity!

AI makes it possible to build things faster and more easily than ever. But that creates a surprisingly difficult question: What should you actually build?

In this interactive one-hour session, we'll explore a simple process for finding AI opportunities worth pursuing — whether that's a tool for yourself, an idea for a side project, something that could improve your work, or an opportunity inside a business.
Instead of starting with “What cool things can AI do?”, we'll start with problems, frustrations, repetitive tasks, unmet needs and things you wish existed — and work backwards from there.

What we'll do
During the hour, you'll:

• Explore your own work, interests, problems and everyday frustrations
• Identify areas where AI could genuinely be useful
• Generate possible tools, products, automations or experiments
• Challenge ideas that are interesting but don't solve much
• Compare opportunities based on potential value and feasibility
• Pick one or two ideas that might actually be worth building or testing

You can use yourself, your work, a side project, or an organization as the starting point.
You don't need to arrive with an idea. Finding one is part of the exercise.

Who's this for
Anyone curious about building useful things with AI.

You might be a developer looking for your next project, an entrepreneur exploring ideas, someone wondering how AI could improve their work, or simply a curious person who keeps seeing what AI can do and thinks:
“Okay... but what should I actually use it for?”

No coding or technical AI knowledge is required.