Day Zero sessions

Day zero is the day you actually start — not the day you meant to. Session one is for the room whose entire AI experience is a chat box. We look at Google's Agent Development Kit long enough to see the long way around, then take the short one: a skill file, written from the thing you keep re-explaining, run in a fresh thread with one word. Then a live sneak peek at Grok Bot — the same pieces, answering. Follow along on a laptop, or just watch.

From the night

Tue Aug 25 at Workuity Biltmore — 2390 E Camelback Rd, Suite 130, Phoenix, AZ 85016. Wed Aug 26 at Workuity Chandler — 3133 W Frye Rd, Suite 101, Chandler, AZ 85226. Same session — pick a room. Event links go live closer to the date; these point at the Ship AI calendars.

Venue sponsor: Workuity. Format: the host builds live on screen. Bring a laptop and work along, or just watch — nobody is put on the spot.

Why this session

The blank box is the whole problem. Nobody was ever taught what to put in it, so the third thread is the first thread again, with a longer preamble. A skill is that preamble, written down. You don't need a framework to get there. You need a markdown file and one evening of running it until it sounds right.

What we cover

1. 01

   The long way around

   Google's Agent Development Kit — a real way to build agents, and a lot of machinery before the first useful sentence. The foil for everything after it.

2. 02

   What a skill is

   Instructions written once, read automatically every time. The thing you keep re-explaining, turned into a file.

3. 03

   What a markdown file is

   A plain text file with headings, lists, and bold. A skill is that file plus two lines of frontmatter. No framework, no deploy.

4. 04

   Start a thread that works

   Context, role, task, format, and the artifact you keep. We start one live and watch the difference from a conversation.

5. 05

   Write the skill

   Take what you just explained, save it as a skill file, run it in a fresh thread with one word.

6. 06

   Iterate

   A skill is never right the first time. Run it, read what sounded wrong, edit the file, run again.

7. 07

   A sneak peek at Grok Bot

   A live demo. Same pieces — skills, markdown, an agent — answering in front of the room.

Afterward

Nothing is required. It compounds if you run the same work on your own product. The suggested output:

01-skills/ — if you want somewhere to put it: the skill you wrote tonight, and a line on what the first run got wrong.

Everything is open source. Missed the session? It's archived in Discord.

The session kit

Slides, a follow-along guide and skill files. Free to download, room or no room.

Install this session's skills

curl -fsSLO https://www.shipai.club/skills/day-zero-01-first-threads.zip
unzip -o day-zero-01-first-threads.zip -d .

What's in the bundle

• /skill-writerSKILL.md

  Turn something you keep re-explaining into a skill file you run with one word. Use the second time you type the same instructions.

Every program skill is on the skills page.