TRNT AI & Innovation Lab

The workshop I'd lead first

🦾 Build Your Own Jarvis

Many kids dream of having their own AI assistant, one that knows them and answers when they call its name. I built a real one: it runs on my Mac mini at home and wakes up when I say "Hey Jarvis." In this workshop, students meet mine live, then design and build their own.

Ages 8–12Design their Jarvis: its name, personality, voice, and rules. Then watch it come to life on the big screen.

Ages 13–15Guided build: write its personality file and teach it a first skill.

Ages 16–18Full build: their own agent with memory, skills, a schedule, and a wake word.

See the workshop How I built mine →

More workshops

Each one stands on its own and ends with something students can show at home. Taken together, they form a path from using AI to building it.

📷Ages 8–18

Invent a Smart Gadget

Students train their own image, sound, or pose model and turn it into an invention: a recycling sorter, a posture coach, a sign-language reader.

They learn: how AI learns from data, why it fails, and how to make it fairer.

Concept

🎮Ages 10–18

AI Game Studio

Students design a game and build it with an AI coding assistant, including a character with its own AI personality.

They learn: logic, game design, and how to direct AI to build what they imagine.

Idea

💡Ages 13–18

AI Startup Studio

Students take a real problem from customer interviews to a working AI prototype and a pitch at Demo Day.

They learn: entrepreneurship, teamwork, and presenting with evidence.

Idea Incubator

See all ten workshop ideas in the AI Lab →

🌐

Running through all of them: a portfolio of their own

In a 30-minute first session, students publish a personal website. Every project they build afterwards gets added to it, so it becomes evidence of real work for university and program applications.

Session plan Sample page

A path, not a one-off

Students can join at any point, and each step builds on the last.

1Show itPublish a portfolio

2Build an agentCreate a Jarvis

3Train AIInvent a Smart Gadget

4Start upAI Startup Studio

5Launch itDemo Day and the incubator

🧪 See the bigger picture: the TRNT AI Lab Ten workshop ideas across three tracks (Create, Build, Lead), with university mentors, Demo Days, and a format that runs across Canada and the US. → 🚀 And beyond the classroom: the Student Product Incubator Students join a real product team or propose their own idea, move through a pipeline with clear success criteria, and the best products go to market with TRNT. →

What every workshop has in common

The tools change. The approach doesn't.

🎯

A real person, a real problemStudents build for someone they know and test it with them.

🧭

Student decisionsWho it's for, how it behaves, and what "good enough" means are the student's choices.

🛡️

Safety by designFirst names only, no personal data in AI tools, and no accounts for students under 13.

🏆

Something to showEvery project ends up in the portfolio and can lead to a mentor pitch.

About these ideas

I build AI products for a living. At Xappert, our product work starts from what users need and then tests whether the solution actually works for them, and I run my own Jarvis, a voice-activated AI agent built on Hermes, day to day. These workshops give students the same process at their level: find a real person, solve a real problem, test it, and explain it.

The concepts are a starting point for discussion. Once we agree on a direction, I'm happy to shape the teaching format, session length, and materials around it.

Bhavesh Ratanpal · bhaveshratanpal.ca · xappert.ca