Saurabh “Rob” Dahal

Most developers have tried AI coding tools. Few have learned how to actually ship with them. The gap between "it generated some code" and "we deployed a production-grade application" is where real AI engineering lives — and it's a skill set that separates developers who use AI from developers who build with it. This hands-on workshop takes you through the full journey of building a production-ready application using Kiro, the AI-powered IDE built for professional software development. You won't just watch — you'll build. Starting from a blank project, we'll move through the complete development lifecycle: defining requirements with specs, scaffolding architecture, wiring up MCP servers for external integrations, building custom agents for specialized tasks, extending capabilities with Kiro Powers, and setting up agent hooks that automate your workflow. Along the way, you'll learn the AI engineering techniques that matter — prompt design, context engineering, human-in-the-loop patterns, and how to maintain control and code quality when your AI is doing the heavy lifting. Whether you're building your first side project or shipping features at work, you'll leave with a working application, a repeatable workflow, and the confidence to go from prototype to production with AI as your engineering partner.

The AI tools most people use live on someone else's servers, run on someone else's models, and store your data in someone else's cloud. OpenClaw flips that script. The fastest-growing open-source project in GitHub history, OpenClaw transforms any LLM into a persistent, autonomous agent that runs on your hardware, connects to the messaging apps you already use, and takes real action on your behalf — managing your inbox, automating your workflows, and working while you sleep. In this session, we'll walk through what makes OpenClaw different from traditional AI assistants, then deploy a fully functional private AI agent live on AWS using Amazon Lightsail and Amazon Bedrock. You'll see how to connect it to WhatsApp or Telegram, set up autonomous tasks like email triage and daily briefings, and configure the security guardrails that keep your agent on a leash. Whether you're a founder looking to automate operations, an engineer exploring agentic AI, or someone who just wants a personal assistant that actually does things — you'll leave with everything you need to get your own agent running