A Rough Idea Workshops

These workshops are about designing and prototyping with AI. You'll start with what a language model actually does, design an agent's behavior, build prototypes by describing them, publish them for others to use, and work with a coding assistant as a collaborator. You'll finish by presenting what you made and what it taught you.

Each workshop works on its own, so start wherever you are. Each one has a start page, a TLDR for a quick run-through, and detailed guides for a deeper understanding.

The Introductory Sequence

#	Workshop	What you'll do
1	How It Actually Works	See what a language model actually does, and where an AI product's design lives.
2	AI as a Material	Learn how models are made, then design an agent's behavior by acting it out.
3	AI as a Tool	Build working prototypes by describing them, and give the tool your design.
4	Sharing AI Prototypes	Publish a prototype from AI Studio to GitHub and Vercel, so anyone can open it.
5	Prototyping Toolkit	Set up a coding assistant, GitHub and Vercel, then prototype with them.
6	Presenting Your Work	Show what you built, how you built it, and what it taught you.

Across the Workshops

• Practice. Keep a process journal, document your design, and test whether your prototype behaves as you intend.
• Glossary. The words the workshops use, in plain language.
• Going Further. Optional projects for after the sequence.

What You'll Need

A laptop, a web browser, and free accounts that each workshop names when you need them. Workshop 5 also uses VS Code and a paid coding assistant plan, unless your school provides one.

Three Ways to Think About AI

• AI as a tool. You use it to get things done.
• AI as a material. It becomes an ingredient in something you make for other people.
• AI as a medium. It becomes a new kind of knowledge artifact in its own right.

The sequence moves through all three.