Workshop 3 · Take home
Agentic resources
Free first. Paid context where it earns the cost. Same posture as the rest of the site.
Downloads
- Prompt library (PDF)
Every prompt across all three workshops. Keep it on your phone.
- Workshop 3 deck (PDF)
The slides from the agentic session. Speaker notes embedded.
Agent builders, free first
- Claude Projects. Free Claude account. System instructions, file uploads, persistent project context. Best for tutor bots and research assistants.
- Poe. Free account. Build and share custom bots backed by various models. Best when you want shareable bots.
- Custom GPTs (in ChatGPT). Free users can use Custom GPTs others built; creating Custom GPTs requires ChatGPT Plus. Listed as paid-only for creators.
- Microsoft Copilot Studio. Free for individuals on Windows; integrates with your local files. Worth knowing if your shop is Microsoft-heavy.
When paid earns it
- Claude Pro / ChatGPT Plus ($20/month). Earn the cost when you use the tool daily, hit the free limit during your scheduled work, and have built workflows that do not transfer to another platform. See the cost-and-limits use case.
- OpenAI / Anthropic API access. Pay-as-you-go, by token. Useful when you have one specific automation that needs more headroom than the chat free tier; not useful for ad hoc chatting.
Automation platforms
- Zapier. Free tier: 100 tasks/month, 2-step Zaps. Easiest learning curve.
- Make. Free tier: 1,000 ops/month, multi-step scenarios. More generous; steeper learning curve.
- n8n. Free if self-hosted; paid hosted plans. Most powerful and least beginner-friendly.
- Pipedream. Free tier with code-driven automations. Best when you want a code escape hatch.
All four allow you to call AI providers (OpenAI, Anthropic) inside an automation. The platform is just the wiring; the AI cost is separate.
Browser and research agents
- Perplexity. Free tier good. Cites sources. The recommended starting tool for browser-style research.
- Manus. Free tier with daily limits. General-purpose agent. Capable but watch costs.
- Browser-use. Open source, free if you self-run. Requires a paid LLM API key. For developers.
- ChatGPT with browsing / agents. Free tier can browse but with rate limits. ChatGPT Plus unlocks the more capable agent modes.
Free reading to go deeper
On agents and prompting
- Anthropic's documentation. Free. The "Building agents" and "Tool use" sections are the clearest plain-language explanation of how agents actually work.
- OpenAI's API documentation. Free. Skip the marketing pages; the function-calling and assistants sections are where the real concepts live.
- DeepLearning.AI short courses. Free. Several specifically on agents, function calling, and LangChain. Skip LangChain unless you write code; the underlying concepts apply everywhere.
On safety and evals
- Anthropic Research. Free. The papers on alignment and on evaluating AI agents are accessible to non-researchers if you skim.
- Meta AI Research. Free. Lots on red-teaming and failure modes.
- OpenAI Research. Free. Read the system cards published with each model release; they are the closest thing to "what this model breaks at" you will find published.
Communities
- r/ChatGPTPro and r/ClaudeAI. Daily-use tips, prompt libraries, real workflow examples.
- r/Zapier and the Make community. Specific automation help when your scenario breaks.
- r/AutomateUserScripts and r/automation. Broader automation ideas, including non-AI ones.
Bonus guides on this site
- Tools comparison. The full free-first table of 10 AI tools.
- Workshop 1 use cases. Career fundamentals.
- Workshop 2 use cases. Tech track applied skills.
Contact
For follow-up questions or to tell me which agent you actually built and used.