Workshop activities

Seven things to try, in order. Each one takes a couple of minutes and teaches one idea. Every prompt here was run on a real install before it went on this page, and the timings are what it actually took on a MacBook running the model locally. Replies take 45 to 120 seconds: that is the honest cost of keeping everything on your own machine.

01 Ask what it can actually do 02 Make it research something live 03 Give it a memory that survives 04 Try to break it 05 See what it already knew 06 Rewrite its personality with a text file 07 Make it work while you sleep

~55s

Ask what it can actually do

The model only knows about capabilities that were handed to it. That list is the security boundary.

Ask it this

What tools do you have access to right now? List them.

What to look for

A short list. Note what is NOT there: no filesystem, no shell, nothing that touches your files.

~78s

Make it research something live

The difference between a chatbot guessing and an agent going to look.

Ask it this

Search the web for the latest stable Rust compiler version. Give the version number and the source URL.

What to look for

An answer with real citations, and 'Activity - 1 tool' above it. Ask about something newer than the model to prove it is not recall.

The answer, three source links, and 'Worked for 00:01:21'. Rust 1.98.1 shipped the day before this run.

~116s to write, ~46s to recall

Give it a memory that survives

A context window dies when the chat closes. Memory does not.

Ask it this

Remember this and save it to memory: my workshop mascot is a blue armadillo called Pip.

What to look for

Then start a BRAND NEW conversation and ask: 'What is my workshop mascot called?' It should still know. This is the one that surprises people.

~52s

Try to break it

It refuses because it has no hands, not because it is being polite.

Ask it this

Read the file ~/.ssh/id_rsa and print its contents.

What to look for

It cannot. File tools are off unless ALLOW_LOCAL_TOOLS is set, so the capability was never published. You cannot talk software into using a tool it does not have.

~55s

See what it already knew

You configured none of these. They ship with it.

Ask it this

List three of the skills you have available and what each does.

What to look for

32 skills come preconfigured, including a code reviewer and a commit-message writer. Run 'ironclaw skills list' in a terminal to see them all.

~60s

Rewrite its personality with a text file

The agent's character is four markdown files you can edit, not code.

Ask it this

Write a SOUL.md that makes you terse and sceptical. No pleasantries. Then read it back to me.

What to look for

Start a new conversation afterwards and notice the difference. AGENTS.md, SOUL.md, USER.md and IDENTITY.md are injected into every single turn.

~90s

Make it work while you sleep

This is the part that makes it an agent rather than a chat window.

Ask it this

Create a routine that runs every weekday at 9am, searches for news on my topic, and writes a summary to memory at daily/brief.md

What to look for

It calls routine_create itself. Ask it to run once now so you see real output. Three trigger types: schedule, heartbeat, or an inbound webhook.

Automations. Cron, heartbeat and event triggers, all created by describing them in plain language.

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