AI-assisted development has come a long way from autocomplete, further than most of us are actually using it. After a year-plus of using these tools daily on real client work, I’ve watched them go from a glorified search box to agents that can build an entire feature while I review the results from my phone.

In this session we’ll make that whole climb live, with no slides full of setup screens and “here’s my results.” We’ll start from a completely empty project and build a real REST API feature end to end, using tools like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot.

We’ll go one step at a time: asking the assistant questions, letting it edit code, then handing it tools to test and fix its own work. From there we’ll teach it your standards with custom skills, wire up the guardrails that keep it honest, and finally turn a team of sub-agents loose while we review the result.

Whether you’ve never opened an AI assistant or you’re already running agents daily, there’s a place to jump in. You’ll walk away understanding how the pieces actually fit together, and how to start building this way on your own projects.