Ateneo Abierto

Beyond the chatbot

Stop asking it things. Start directing it.

A chatbot answers you. An agent does the work with you: it reads your files, follows a plan and hands you the document. Learning to direct it is the skill that’s coming, and from Venezuela you can start today: free, and without knowing how to code.

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The idea, in 5 minutes · Watch the talk

  1. You directYou point it at the folder and say what you need.
  2. The agent worksIt builds a plan, opens your files and saves the result.
  3. You decideYou check it and decide what comes next.
Quarterly spending

I have three spreadsheets with this quarter’s spending. Merge them and give me a one-page summary.

  • spending-july.csv
  • spending-august.csv
  • spending-september.csv

On it. Here’s my plan:

  1. Read your instructions AGENTS.md
  2. Read the 3 spreadsheets$ head -3 spending-*.csv
  3. Reconcile the categoriesWrote reconcile.py$ python3 reconcile.py spending-*.csv
  4. Compare against the previous quarter$ python3 compare.py --against spending-q2.csv
  5. Save the summary to your folderWrote summary-q3.md

Summary · Third quarter

Spending by category

CategoryTotalvs. Q2
Transport412+18%
Materials268−4%
Connectivity1500%

Transport is the only line that really moved: start there.

Saved to your folder · summary-q3.md

Looks good. Put it in Excel for the meeting.

On it, moving it to Excel:

  1. Used the skill xlsx
  2. Put the table in an Excel sheet$ python3 table_to_excel.py summary-q3.md
  3. Save it next to the summaryWrote summary-q3.xlsx
summary-q3.xlsx Excel · 1 sheet · 14 KB

Saved to your folder · summary-q3.xlsx

Pick another task from the list, or press “Show what it runs” to see what the agent does on your computer. This is a local demo: it connects to nothing, and the figures are examples.

I · The shift

From asking to directing

Chatbots already read your documents and hand files back. The difference is how much of the work is still yours. An agent works in your folder, follows a plan and checks what it does: the task gets done while you do something else, and the judgment stays yours.

The same task: merge three months of spending and decide where to cut.

With a chatbot

It reads your files and hands documents back now too. But every fix and every file still goes through you.

  1. You You upload the three sheets and ask for the summary.
  2. Chatbot It hands back a summary and a file to download.
  3. You You check it and see it mixed up two categories.
  4. You You explain, upload again, download again.
  5. You You save it in your folder. Next month, you start from scratch.

4 of 5 steps are yours to do.

With an agent

It works in your folder, follows a plan and checks what it does. You decide.

  1. You You point it at the folder and say what you need.
  2. Agent It builds a plan and shows it to you before starting.
  3. Agent It opens the three sheets, reconciles the categories and checks the totals.
  4. Agent It saves the summary and the Excel file in your folder, next to the originals.
  5. You You check it and decide where to cut. Next month, you ask in one line.

2 of 5 steps are yours to do: asking and deciding.

The same argument, at length (in Spanish): Por qué dejé los chatbots

II · What we do

Three doors

They run in order: watch, learn, then take it further as a team. None of them asks you to know how to code.

Mentorship at every hackathon, one mentor per team, from choosing the task to presenting it. Included.

Glossary

Four words you’ll hear

You don’t need them to sign up.
Agent
“Merge these three sheets.”
A program that takes a task, makes a plan and carries it out on your computer: it opens files, runs commands and hands you the result to check.
Skill
skills/xlsx
A recipe that teaches the agent to do one thing well, like building a spreadsheet or a deck. You install it once and it uses it whenever it needs to.
Instructions
AGENTS.md · CLAUDE.md
A file in your folder where you write how you want it to work: your tone, your formats, what it must not touch. The agent reads it before every task.
Your folder
Documents/Ateneo
You give the agent a folder to work in. What it produces stays there, on your computer, where you can check it.

Open Demos

The goalLearn from what others are already doing, and show your own.

What we do

  1. Two-to-five-minute demos: which task, which tool, what went wrong and how you fixed it.
  2. Questions after each demo.
  3. Open conversation to meet people solving similar problems.

What to expectOpen to anyone. You don’t need to sign up to watch; you do to present.

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Workshops

The goalThat you leave having directed an agent on your own, on your own computer, with a workspace ready to keep using.

What we do

  1. We open with a live demo: the same task, with a chatbot and with an agent.
  2. Everyone installs an agent on their computer.
  3. You work with the files of a sample company: documents, spreadsheets, slides and PDFs.
  4. At the end you teach the agent a task of your own.

What to expectIn person, two and a half hours, 8 to 15 people. Bring your laptop. Arranged by email: write to us.

Write to us

Hackathon for non-technical people

The goalSolve a real task as a team, start to finish, and learn from how the others do it.

What we do

  1. Each team picks a real task it wants to solve.
  2. A mentor stays with each team for the whole day.
  3. At the close, each team shows what it got done.
  4. What each team builds, such as instructions and skills for agents, is published in Ateneo Abierto’s repository, open and free for anyone to use.

What to expectOne day, in person. You don’t need to know how to code. Bring your laptop; a modest one will do. Mentorship included.

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III · Where this goes

Same room, same resources, same chance.

There are public libraries where it doesn’t matter who you are: they lend computers, teach people who have never touched a keyboard, and sit you next to people working on the same problems as you. Knowledge, networks, infrastructure and a culture of technology, open to anyone. That’s what we want for Venezuela. We’re starting small; the horizon is a space like that in every city.

  1. Today Open demos, workshops and hackathons, in small groups.
  2. Next Partnerships with universities and organizations, alongside formal education.
  3. Horizon An open space in every city, where what matters isn’t who you are or where you come from, but where you want to go.
CaracasValenciaBarquisimetoMaracaiboMéridaSan CristóbalCumanáCiudad GuayanaPuerto Ayacucho Zona en Reclamación
  • A city we want to reach
  • Planned, later

These are not confirmed sites.

IV · Principles

How we work

Four rules you can see in everything we do.

Open first

We start with open-source tools you can use without paying and without depending on a single company.

You decide

You give the instructions and you check the result. The agent works for you, not the other way around.

Your files are yours

Your work lives in your folder, in open formats any program can open today and in ten years. When you need Word, Excel or PowerPoint, the agent produces them from there, so the final file doesn’t tie you to any platform.

Resilience

Everything we teach runs on a modest laptop, and there’s always a free way to start.

V · Hear it

What they can’t take

Where this comes from: a generation that went abroad to study and came back to teach, a country that lost that path, and the question of what we can do in the meantime. Skills nobody can take from you, and opportunities within anyone’s reach.

Ignite Talk · Oslo Freedom Forum “What They Can’t Take” · David Aragort The video loads from YouTube only when you press play. Not loading? Watch it on YouTube

VI · Stay in the loop

Join

We’ll let you know about the next hackathon and open demo. Nothing else.

Do you fund, teach, or have a space? Write to us: ateneo@aragort.com

Newsletter language

We only use this to write to you.

You know this floor. This time it is not for leaving.