AI for Tradies - Build Your Own AI Agent to Run the Office in Half a Day
A partner that carries your whole business in its head, remembers every job, every quote and every client, writes in your voice, chases what needs chasing, and builds what you ask for. We build the operating system together in half a day, and it runs on your own machine forever. Imagine - a new hire that reads everything and forgets nothing.
Live session Next dates booked out New dates soon
The part nobody has explained
Everything your business does after the tools go down is made of code. The quotes, the invoices, the chasing, the job photos, the reviews, the website, the ads, the spreadsheet the numbers live in. An agent that writes code can build and run all of that.
Nobody has explained this to you because almost everyone explaining it is talking to programmers. This page is written for the person who owns the trade business.
If you just want someone to tell you exactly what you need to know, without the fluff, that is what happens here. Nothing to piece together from 400 YouTube videos and 3,000 forum threads.
This course is not about how to use Claude Code.
Anyone can learn to use an AI tool, at any moment. The course is about what you do with one: the agent operating system we build on it for your trade business.
By the end of the half day, your agent is a contact in your phone.
It has its own machine, its own email address, and its own thread in your Messages, all set up in the session. Six things get handed over:
A Mac that stays switched on. It keeps working after you close your laptop for the night.
A real identity in its own name, so the machine, the messages, and the files belong to the agent.
Mail arrives addressed to the agent, it reads what comes in, and it replies.
Text it the way you text anyone else in your phone, and it messages you back when something needs a decision from you.
It gets the accounts you choose to hand over, one at a time, and you can take any of them back the same afternoon.
AirDrop it a contract, or email it the spreadsheet, and it picks the work up from there.
You can reach it from anywhere. Message it from an iPad in a hotel room and the machine at home does the work.
The machine itself is small and silent. A Mac mini sits on a shelf or behind the TV and works around the clock. When you want to see what it is doing, screen share from your laptop or iPad and watch it work.
I run mine from my phone through ShellDrop, an iOS terminal app I built for exactly this and put on the App Store.
The AI brain can be swapped out instantly. Sick of Claude? Swap to Codex or Grok.
When a smarter brain is released the swap takes one second and your partner is sharper from the next question on. Same identity, same email address, same memory of every client and every decision, and nothing gets re-taught. It has already happened several times in this practice: a new model ships in the morning, and by the afternoon the same agent is simply sharper, without one file changing. The knowledge sits in files you own, so every brain that follows inherits all of it, watching and experiencing its evolution yourself is astonishing.
First the operating system, then your first app
The operating system goes in first. Then we build the first version of an app you actually want, together, in the same session.
Say a Monday morning page: a private page only you can see, where the agent reads the spreadsheet or the bank export the business already keeps and turns it into the picture you want at the start of the week. What came in, what is owed, and which quotes are still waiting on an answer.
Next dates
Half a day on Zoom, 9am to 1pm Melbourne time.
One-on-one, your timezone
$3,000AUD
How I ended up teaching this
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The start
RMIT. A double degree: business administration and computer systems engineering.
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After university
Hewlett-Packard, then Siemens in London on the BBC account. Enterprise technology.
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15 years
My own businesses, no team for most of them. Photography first: 55 countries with a camera, and a photograph of mine on the cover of National Geographic.
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2011
Opened DJB Photography School in Melbourne. Teaching beginners ever since.
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The partnership
Ads and growth at Northbase, mostly for trades, services, and family companies.
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Now
Built the agent operating system this course teaches. My businesses run on it: one person, no staff. ShellDrop, built inside it, is on the App Store.
So is this page.
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I am the bridge between you, your business, and the world of technical AI.
How the half day runs
Four hours on Zoom, two seats in the session, and everything on this page gets built on your own machine while we go.
- Half a day, live
- Four hours on Zoom, 9am to 1pm Melbourne time, with your screen shared the whole way.
- Two seats
- Two people in the session, so both get time on screen and both leave with something working.
- $2,000 a seat
- Paid by card on this page. A private one-on-one session is $3,000, at a time you choose.
- The starting line
- We begin by opening Terminal, the black window, for the first time. Zero is the starting point and I teach from there, so you do not need to arrive knowing a thing.
- The machine it lives on
- The system stays on your machine and keeps working while you are away, so it needs one that can stay on around the clock. A Mac mini does that job and is cheap for it. The recommended setup is a Mac mini M4: 16GB memory minimum, and 1TB of storage is worth having.
- What you take home
- Your personalised business agent operating system and your first app v1.0
- Two weeks after
- WhatsApp access to me for the two weeks following the session, for the questions that come up once you are using it.
What you walk out with
At the end of the four hours there is a system running on your own machine.
It has read how the business makes money, who the clients are, how you talk, and what is on this quarter. Every answer starts from that, so you stop re-explaining yourself.
Every client, every project, every note lives in files the agent reads before it answers. Ask what happened with a client eighteen months ago and the answer comes back with the detail.
Emails, proposals, follow-ups, quotes. Your voice is written down in the system, so what comes back sounds like you wrote it on a good day.
Drop in a spreadsheet or an export and ask what changed, what is working, and where the money actually went.
Ask for a dashboard, a review page, a small internal site. You describe what you want and watch it get built during the session.
For the two weeks after the session you can message me on WhatsApp, for the questions that come up once you are actually using it.
This practice runs on exactly this system. One person, no staff. Client work, the numbers, the ads, the emails, and the pages on this website all run through that system.
Questions people ask before booking
What's the best AI for tradies?
One that knows your business. Off-the-shelf tradie software gives every subscriber the same thing. On this course you build your own agent: it learns your jobs, your prices and your customers, and it runs on your own machine. Tradies AI that you own, in other words, and nobody bills you monthly for it.
I'm flat out on the tools. How much time does this take?
Half a day on Zoom, 9am to 1pm Melbourne time. You finish with the agent working. For the two weeks after, you can message me on WhatsApp with whatever comes up once you're using it.
I'm not a computer person. Can I actually do this?
The course is written for exactly you. We start with opening the black window for the first time, and I'm on the screen with you the whole way. No coding experience needed.
What will the agent actually do for my trade business?
Whatever you hand it: write the quotes, chase the unpaid invoices, reply to the emails, keep the job notes, read your numbers, update the website. It works around the clock on its own machine, whether your laptop is open or not.
What does it cost?
$2,000 AUD a seat, two seats per session, paid by card on this page. A private one-on-one session is $3,000, at a time that suits you.
Half a day, two seats, and your own system running at the end.
See the dates →The Conduit
My emails. The bridge between what's happening in AI and the business you actually run. When something matters for business owners, I explain it in plain English and send it over. No schedule, so it turns up when there's something worth saying.
Daniel Bilsborough teaches the Claude Code course out of Melbourne, Australia. He is an AI advisor and an ads and growth specialist at Northbase, with an enterprise tech background at Hewlett-Packard and Siemens and fifteen years running his own businesses. The agent operating system built in the course is the same one running his advisory practice.