Boulder Startup Week 2026
Architecting Agentic Workflows for the Lean 2026 Startup
A workshop for founders, operators, and small-business owners who want to build AI systems that actually work, not just chat with one. If you came from the QR code at the venue, you are in the right spot. Everything from the workshop is below.
Workshop materials
Slide deck
The full deck from the workshop. Opens in a new tab. Press F for fullscreen, arrow keys to navigate.
open the deck ↗
Tutorial · build your first agent in 90 minutes
Step-by-step. Copy-pasteable. The exact build we walk through live, written so you can finish it on your own afterward.
read the tutorial →
Setup guide · swap any provider
How to swap providers without rewriting the workflow. Groq, Jina, Ollama, Gemini, OpenRouter. Pick whichever is cheapest or fastest for your case.
read the setup guide →
n8n workflow templates
Two ready-to-import workflows: the lite version on free providers, and the full version on Anthropic + Firecrawl. Direct download.
download the templates →
Handouts · printable references
Brand voice template, ICP template, agent JSON schemas, the OSS growth playbook (13 case studies), the 20/80 worksheet. All forkable.
open the handouts →
Source repo
The whole workshop as code, MIT-licensed. Clone or fork if you want the raw markdown, JSONs, and slide source.
open the repo on github ↗
What you will leave with
Find your agent-ready tasks
A simple 90-minute exercise to spot the 20% of your manual work that an agent can take over today, and the 80% that should stay with humans.
Build a working agent live
We build a Growth Agent together using n8n and an LLM of your choice. You leave with the same workflow running on your own machine, ready to adapt.
Keep the human in the loop
Practical patterns for keeping brand voice, judgment, and oversight intact while the agent does the repetitive work.
Whether you write code or you have never opened a terminal, you leave with a working agent and a plan for the next one.
Want help setting up your first agent?
Bring the workflow you want to automate, the part of your week that eats your time. Inbox, reporting, follow-ups, lead research, status updates. We sit down for 30 minutes and sketch the agent that handles it. You leave with a working plan you can hand to whoever builds it for you, or follow yourself.
Five free sessions for workshop attendees. No sales.
book a free session ›Local-First AI
Want the writeup of the workshop, plus weekly notes on what is actually working?
n8n templates, cost teardowns, and what is actually working in 2026. No drip sequences, no upsells. Reply to opt out.
Related on the blog
- Find Your Agent-Ready Tasks in 90 Minutes, the framework behind the workshop
- Three Ways to Run Open Weights for Pennies, the cost math for the agents you build
- Notes on Human-in-the-Loop, how to keep the human part of the agent
- All local-models posts →