Prepare your laptop

In this lesson you get your laptop ready for the workshop: an open terminal, a practice folder with three files and, if you want, OpenCode installed ahead of time. It takes about 10 minutes.

1. Open a terminal

The terminal is a window where you type commands instead of clicking. Every computer comes with one.

Mac: open Terminal (search for it with Cmd + Space and type "Terminal").
Windows: open Terminal or PowerShell from the Start menu.
Linux: your desktop's terminal (it usually opens with Ctrl + Alt + T).

Type this and press Enter:

echo hola

If the terminal answers hola, it's ready. That's all you need to know about the terminal to get started.

2. Create the practice folder

We're going to work on a small folder with sample expense data. Create a folder called agent-workshop wherever you like (the Desktop works). You can do it with a right click, "New Folder", or from the terminal:

mkdir agent-workshop
cd agent-workshop

Inside that folder, create three files with any text editor (VS Code, Notepad on Windows, TextEdit on Mac in plain text mode). Copy the content exactly as it is.

File expenses.csv:

date,description,category,amount
2026-09-01,Groceries at the market,food,54.20
2026-09-02,Bus card top-up,transport,20.00
2026-09-03,Coffee with a friend,Food,6.50
2026-09-05,Internet bill,home,35.00
2026-09-07,Movie tickets,fun,18.00
2026-09-09,Groceries at the market,food,61.75
2026-09-12,Taxi home,Transport,12.40
2026-09-14,Electricity bill,home,42.10
2026-09-18,Lunch near the office,food,11.90
2026-09-21,Concert,fun,45.00
2026-09-25,Bus card top-up,transport,20.00
2026-09-28,Groceries at the market,food,58.30

File notes.md:

# Budget notes

- I want to know where my money goes each month.
- My goal for October: spend less than 350 in total.
- I suspect food is the most expensive, but I haven't added it up.

File opencode.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://opencode.ai/config.json",
  "permission": {
    "edit": "ask",
    "bash": "ask"
  }
}

This last one is important and we'll explain it live: it tells the agent to ask your permission before writing a file or running a command. By default it doesn't ask. For a first time, we want it to ask.

Notice that the CSV has something odd in it on purpose. Don't fix it: it's part of the exercise.

3. (Optional) Install OpenCode ahead of time

If you want to save time, install it now with the steps in the Install and connect OpenCode lesson in the Live module. If something fails, don't worry: we'll sort it out in the first minutes of the session.

4. (Optional) Git, so you can undo

OpenCode has an /undo command that undoes the agent's last change, but it only works if the folder is a Git repository. If you already have Git installed, go into the folder and run:

git init

If you don't know what Git is, skip this step. For the workshop, it's enough that the agent asks your permission before each change.

Check that you're ready

I opened a terminal and it answered hola.
I have the agent-workshop folder with expenses.csv, notes.md, and opencode.json.

What if my editor saved the file as expenses.csv.txt?

This happens a lot on Windows with Notepad and on Mac with TextEdit. When you save, choose "All Files" as the type and type the full name with its extension. In TextEdit, before pasting, use Format, Make Plain Text. If you can't get it to work, come as you are: we'll fix it live in a minute.

Summary

You opened a terminal and checked that it responds.
You created the agent-workshop folder with the three practice files.
Next step: get a key from a model provider.