Upgrade to Pro — share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …

Build-to-own AI: Agentic Development for Humans

Build-to-own AI: Agentic Development for Humans

Agentic coding assistants have transformed the way we build software – and they can be even more impactful for AI development itself. Instead of using LLM APIs, we can take back control and build our own AI systems, bootstrapped for us by agents. In this talk, I'll show you these new agentic development workflows, what they mean for developer tools and why code and the open-source ecosystem are more important than ever.

I'll also share some practical examples of how we built agents to help developers solve real-world NLP tasks and create practical and modular solutions that are small, fast and fully data-private. This requires human and agent collaboration: apps and developer APIs need to speak the same language, and humans need to be able to work alongside the LLM, not just with a model in the loop.

Avatar for Ines Montani

Ines Montani PRO

July 10, 2026

Resources

Ellf: Your Virtual NLP Engineer (beta)

https://beta.ellf.ai

Read about and join the waitlist for Ellf, our new platform and virtual assistant for applied NLP and agentic NLP development.

Against LLM Maximalism

https://explosion.ai/blog/against-llm-maximalism

A lot of people are building truly new things with LLMs, like wild interactive fiction experiences that weren’t possible before. But if you’re working on the same sort of NLP problems that businesses have been trying to solve for a long time, what’s the best way to use them?

Let Them Write Code

https://speakerdeck.com/inesmontani/let-them-write-code-keynote-pycon-india-2019

Our philosophy for building developer tools and why good tooling needs good programmable interfaces.

The AI Revolution Will Not Be Monopolized

https://speakerdeck.com/inesmontani/the-ai-revolution-will-not-be-monopolized-how-open-source-beats-economies-of-scale-even-for-llms

Are we heading further into a black box era with larger and larger models, obscured behind APIs controlled by big tech monopolies? I don’t think so, and in this talk, I’ll show you why.

Atomic NLP

https://explosion.ai/blog/atomic-nlp

An applied NLP methodology inspired by Atomic Design: building reliable language understanding systems out of small, composable components instead of one big model and a prompt.

A practical guide to human-in-the-loop distillation

https://explosion.ai/blog/human-in-the-loop-distillation

This blog post presents practical solutions for using the latest state-of-the-art models in real-world applications and distilling their knowledge into smaller and faster components that you can run and maintain in-house.

Building AI with AI

https://speakerdeck.com/inesmontani/building-ai-with-ai

In this talk, I'll show you why we should use LLMs to build systems instead of as systems, and why code and the open-source ecosystem is more important than ever, not less.

More Decks by Ines Montani

Other Decks in Programming

Transcript

  1. users companies fu y scriptable in Python Alex Smith Developer

    Kim Miller Analyst GPT-5 API Modern scriptable annotation tool for machine learning developers 12k+ 1000+ prodigy.ai
  2. new: Virtual assistant and collaborative platform for agentic NLP development

    beta.ellf.ai ✳ Claude Code ❯ We need to extract products and pricing from press releases. We started with an LLM API but it's slow and expensive, and our data needs to stay private. How can we train our own model? ⏺ Let me analyze your requirements and put together a project plan for you.
  3. new: Virtual assistant and collaborative platform for agentic NLP development

    beta.ellf.ai ✳ Claude Code ❯ We need to extract products and pricing from press releases. We started with an LLM API but it's slow and expensive, and our data needs to stay private. How can we train our own model? ⏺ Let me analyze your requirements and put together a project plan for you. Alex Smith Developer Kim Miller Analyst
  4. We used to build software for people to build software.

    Now we build software so software can build software. Developer tools: PyData London 2026 Jeremiah Lowin (Prefect)
  5. sort these documents into custom categories create data and train

    a classifier for custom categories prompting the ll m:
  6. sort these documents into custom categories create data and train

    a classifier for custom categories accurate fast small private cheap transparent ... modular reliable prompting the ll m:
  7. sort these documents into custom categories create data and train

    a classifier for custom categories accurate fast small private cheap transparent ... modular reliable software development best practices prompting the ll m:
  8. explosion.ai/blog/against-llm-maximalism ll m maximalism Why don't we just build cla

    ss ifiers? lots of steps operational complexity annoying
  9. explosion.ai/blog/against-llm-maximalism ll m maximalism Why don't we just build cla

    ss ifiers? lots of steps operational complexity no data annoying
  10. explosion.ai/blog/against-llm-maximalism ll m maximalism Why don't we just build cla

    ss ifiers? lots of steps operational complexity needs expertise no data annoying
  11. software coding agent works pre tt y we ll already!

    agentic code compiler program software code data + training model
  12. software coding agent works pre tt y we ll already!

    agentic code compiler program software code data + training model coding agent agentic
  13. software coding agent works pre tt y we ll already!

    agentic code compiler program software code data + training model + we n ee d to run lots of stu ff ! coding agent agentic
  14. software training annotation evaluation preprocessing ... analysis coding agent works

    pre tt y we ll already! agentic code compiler program software code data + training model + we n ee d to run lots of stu ff ! coding agent agentic
  15. beta.ellf.ai ✳ Claude Code ❯ We need to extract products

    and pricing from press releases. We started with an LLM API but it's slow and expensive, and our data needs to stay private. How can we train our own model? ⏺ Let me analyze your requirements and put together a project plan for you.
  16. beta.ellf.ai ✳ Claude Code ❯ We need to extract products

    and pricing from press releases. We started with an LLM API but it's slow and expensive, and our data needs to stay private. How can we train our own model? ⏺ Let me analyze your requirements and put together a project plan for you. skills MCP + distilled expertise from 10+ years of solving NLP problems
  17. beta.ellf.ai ✳ Claude Code ❯ We need to extract products

    and pricing from press releases. We started with an LLM API but it's slow and expensive, and our data needs to stay private. How can we train our own model? ⏺ Let me analyze your requirements and put together a project plan for you. compute platform skills MCP + distilled expertise from 10+ years of solving NLP problems
  18. beta.ellf.ai ✳ Claude Code ❯ We need to extract products

    and pricing from press releases. We started with an LLM API but it's slow and expensive, and our data needs to stay private. How can we train our own model? ⏺ Let me analyze your requirements and put together a project plan for you. Kubernetes cluster hosted by user local or cloud compute platform skills MCP + distilled expertise from 10+ years of solving NLP problems
  19. beta.ellf.ai ✳ Claude Code ❯ We need to extract products

    and pricing from press releases. We started with an LLM API but it's slow and expensive, and our data needs to stay private. How can we train our own model? ⏺ Let me analyze your requirements and put together a project plan for you. Kubernetes cluster hosted by user local or cloud compute platform skills MCP + distilled expertise from 10+ years of solving NLP problems prodigy for annotation agents +
  20. @task_recipe( title="My Recipe", field_props={ "input": TextProps(title="Input data"), "labels": ListProps(title="Labels"), "dataset":

    props.dataset_choice, } ) def my_recipe(input: Input, labels: List[str], dataset: Dataset): ... Recipe human + coding agent co ll aboration beta.ellf.ai
  21. @task_recipe( title="My Recipe", field_props={ "input": TextProps(title="Input data"), "labels": ListProps(title="Labels"), "dataset":

    props.dataset_choice, } ) def my_recipe(input: Input, labels: List[str], dataset: Dataset): ... Recipe $ ellf tasks create my_recipe -- input "Corpus" - - labels PRODUCT,ORG - - dataset products CLI human + coding agent co ll aboration beta.ellf.ai
  22. @task_recipe( title="My Recipe", field_props={ "input": TextProps(title="Input data"), "labels": ListProps(title="Labels"), "dataset":

    props.dataset_choice, } ) def my_recipe(input: Input, labels: List[str], dataset: Dataset): ... Recipe $ ellf tasks create my_recipe -- input "Corpus" - - labels PRODUCT,ORG - - dataset products CLI Input data input Corpus Labels labels PRODUCT ORG Dataset dataset products Start task UI human + coding agent co ll aboration beta.ellf.ai
  23. @task_recipe( title="My Recipe", field_props={ "input": TextProps(title="Input data"), "labels": ListProps(title="Labels"), "dataset":

    props.dataset_choice, } ) def my_recipe(input: Input, labels: List[str], dataset: Dataset): ... Recipe $ ellf tasks create my_recipe -- input "Corpus" - - labels PRODUCT,ORG - - dataset products CLI scripting the SaaS app! Input data input Corpus Labels labels PRODUCT ORG Dataset dataset products Start task UI human + coding agent co ll aboration beta.ellf.ai
  24. PyCon India keynote (2019) spacy.fyi/ltwc Developer tools need good programmable

    interfaces. All abstractions leak. coding a ss istants (2026)
  25. PyCon Lithuania keynote (2024) Open Source beats economies of scale,

    even for LLMs. LLMs can be one part of a product and swapped. spacy.fyi/ai-revolution
  26. PyCon Lithuania keynote (2024) Open Source beats economies of scale,

    even for LLMs. LLMs can be one part of a product and swapped. Interoperability is the opposite of monopoly. spacy.fyi/ai-revolution
  27. PyCon Lithuania keynote (2024) Open Source beats economies of scale,

    even for LLMs. LLMs can be one part of a product and swapped. Interoperability is the opposite of monopoly. spacy.fyi/ai-revolution
  28. PyCon Lithuania keynote (2024) Open Source beats economies of scale,

    even for LLMs. LLMs can be one part of a product and swapped. Interoperability is the opposite of monopoly. spacy.fyi/ai-revolution
  29. PyCon Lithuania keynote (2024) Open Source beats economies of scale,

    even for LLMs. LLMs can be one part of a product and swapped. Interoperability is the opposite of monopoly. spacy.fyi/ai-revolution building custom and private ai in house (2026)
  30. Takeaways Use LLMs to build the system, not as the

    system. Apps, developer APIs and agents need to speak the same language. agent UI api
  31. Takeaways Use LLMs to build the system, not as the

    system. Code is more important than ever – not less! Apps, developer APIs and agents need to speak the same language. agent UI api
  32. Takeaways Use LLMs to build the system, not as the

    system. Code is more important than ever – not less! * * including the open-source ecosystem! Apps, developer APIs and agents need to speak the same language. agent UI api
  33. join beta + Waitlist Explosion spaCy Prodigy Ellf Bluesky Mastodon

    explosion.ai spacy.io prodigy.ai beta.ellf.ai @inesmontani.bsky.social @[email protected] LinkedIn