AI Fluency for Builders: From Zero to Your First AI-Augmented Tool

AI is everywhere – but most teams still find it hard to use in practice. You don't need specialist knowledge to start experimenting.

This masterclass gives you the confidence to build and test a working AI-powered tool, even if your organisation hasn't yet found the "right" use case.

We'll use a straightforward example – documenting software decisions – as the vehicle. Step by step, you'll connect to open models, refine prompts, review outputs, and guide AI towards results you can trust.

By the end, you'll have walked through the full workflow of building with AI – and gained the fluency to explore in your own context.

What You'll Learn

• How to treat AI as a collaborator, not a magic box
• Plugging open models (ollama + LangChain) into a working scaffold
• Iterating on prompts and fixing failure cases
• Guiding AI reasoning: generating options, weighing trade-offs, reviewing outputs
• Principles you can transfer to docs, testing, support, or other workflows

Who It's For

• Developers and technical practitioners curious about AI
• Comfortable with git and reading TypeScript/JavaScript
• Teams that want confidence to explore AI, even without a business case in hand

No prior AI experience required – just curiosity, a decent dev machine, and a working setup (instructions shared in advance).

Join Tech Cornwall and Andy Weir for a truly interactive AI masterclass that combines show-and-tell with hands-on opportunities in breakouts.

This isn't about becoming an AI specialist. It's about building enough fluency to create real-world solutions today.

Get to know Andy

Andy is a Cornwall-based software engineering veteran, with over 20 years’ experience helping organisations deliver better software, streamline delivery flow, and align engineering architectures with business outcomes. Over his career as a Full Stack Software Engineer / Staff Software Engineer, Andy built deep expertise in modernising legacy systems, improving team effectiveness, and designing scalable architectures.

Now running his own business - Andy Weir Consulting - he offers hands-on technical leadership, consulting, coaching, and diagnostics (often AI-powered) to help organisations scale, reduce risk, unblock software delivery bottlenecks and embed sustainable change.

As this training is Part-Funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund there will be some paperwork for attendees to complete (this only needs completing once and is not required for every masterclass).

This project is part-funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Cornwall Council has been chosen by Government as a Lead Authority for the fund and is responsible for monitoring the progress of projects funded through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.