CRAB

Colleges · Workshops

One-day AI workshops

Hands-on AI builds your club can host in a lab or classroom - from “build your own ChatGPT” to RAG, agents, and multimodal apps. One day, one working demo.

How it runs

One day. Hands-on. End to end.

One full day

Every workshop is a single day of building. Morning setup, afternoon ship - students leave with a working AI demo.

Hands-on from the start

Students code, prompt, and debug in the room. Whiteboards support the work - they are not the whole session.

Mentors on the floor

CRAB mentors stay at the tables. Questions get answered in the build, not in a Q&A parked at the end.

Catalog

AI workshops from beginner to advanced

AI only - each entry is a full one-day hands-on build. Pick a level that matches your cohort, or run a sequence across the term.

  • Beginner · One day

    Build Your Own ChatGPT

    Wire a chat UI to an LLM API, add system prompts and conversation history, and ship a personal chatbot you can demo before the day ends.

    Prerequisites

    • Basic JavaScript or Python (variables, functions, simple HTTP calls)
    • A laptop with a modern browser and an IDE or editor installed
    • An API key for an LLM provider (we share setup steps before the day)
    • No prior ML or AI course required
  • Beginner · One day

    Prompt Engineering Lab

    Design prompts that actually hold up: roles, few-shot examples, structured outputs, and failure cases - then bake the winners into a small app.

    Prerequisites

    • Comfort typing and editing code in a text editor
    • Basic familiarity with any programming language
    • A laptop and a chat-model account or API key for the lab
    • Curiosity about why prompts fail - no maths background needed
  • Intermediate · One day

    Chat with Your Documents (RAG)

    Index PDFs or notes, retrieve the right chunks, and ground answers in real campus context. Leave with a working docs chatbot, not a slide deck.

    Prerequisites

    • Completed “Build Your Own ChatGPT” or equivalent LLM API experience
    • Python or TypeScript comfort (install packages, run a local server)
    • Familiarity with JSON and reading API docs
    • Sample PDFs or notes ready to index (campus syllabus, club notes, etc.)
  • Intermediate · One day

    Build an AI Agent with Tools

    Give a model tools - search, calculators, APIs - and orchestrate a multi-step agent that finishes a real task end-to-end in the room.

    Prerequisites

    • Comfort calling LLM APIs and parsing structured JSON responses
    • Basic understanding of functions/APIs (you will wrap tools the model can call)
    • Python or TypeScript; git optional but useful
    • Prior RAG or chatbot workshop recommended, not required
  • Advanced · One day

    Fine-Tune a Small Language Model

    Prep a dataset, run a focused fine-tune, and evaluate before/after. Understand when fine-tuning beats prompting - with a model you trained that day.

    Prerequisites

    • Solid Python (pandas or plain scripts for dataset cleanup)
    • Familiarity with neural nets / training loops at a high level
    • Laptop with enough disk for a small model; GPU cloud access if we use it (details before the day)
    • Prior LLM API or RAG workshop strongly recommended
  • Advanced · One day

    Multimodal AI: Vision + Chat

    Build an app that sees images and answers questions about them - upload, describe, extract - a working vision chat demo by evening.

    Prerequisites

    • Built a text chatbot before (API + chat UI)
    • Comfort with file uploads and handling images in code
    • Python or TypeScript; basic HTML/CSS for a simple UI
    • A vision-capable model API key (setup shared ahead of the workshop)

Need a different one-day track? Tell us in the request form - we shape the session to your students and the room you have.

Request

Request an AI workshop for your campus

Tell us your college, which one-day AI workshop you want, and when. We email the team and follow up with mentors and next steps.

Submitting emails your workshop request to chennairoboticsaibuilders@gmail.com. We reply with next steps for your campus.

Standing up a full club? Request affiliation instead - or go back to colleges.