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guild-hall

Quest-based engagement platform where communities complete adventures, not checklists

Agentics NZ Guild Reference

Purpose: This document consolidates all available information about the Agentics NZ Guild to inform quest design and community engagement.

Field Value
Guild Name Agentics NZ (Agentic Engineers Guild NZ)
Parent Organization Agentics Foundation
Location New Zealand
Founded August 2025
Website https://agentics-nz.fly.dev/
Legal Structure Informal chapter under Agentics Foundation (originally planned as NZ Incorporated Society)

Mission & Vision

Tagline

“Promoting applied agentic engineering practice and education in NZ”

Core Focus Areas

  1. Applied Agentic Engineering — Practical implementation of AI agent systems
  2. AI Education — Building pathways from novice to productive agentic engineer
  3. Sovereign AI — Local control over AI infrastructure, data, and models
  4. Open Source — Supporting development of open source agentic AI systems
  5. Community Building — Creating a guild structure with mentorship and knowledge sharing

The Guild Philosophy

From the founding presentation:

“Guilds have always been about people. Medieval guilds were communities where craftspeople set standards, trained apprentices, and supported one another. They protected quality and preserved knowledge through master-apprentice relationships—social contracts built on trust and shared responsibility.

The Agentics Foundation carries that spirit into the AI era. Our craft is building agentic systems that operate safely and ethically. Like traditional guilds, we focus on mentorship, knowledge sharing, and setting standards that protect both the craft and its practitioners.”

Parent Organization: Agentics Foundation

Overview

Global Community Stats

Foundation Leadership

| Name | Role | |——|——| | Reuven (rUv) Cohen | Founder, President | | Robert Ranson | Co-Founder (Human Race AI) | | Haiyang (Ocean) Li | LionAGI creator | | Dave Brace | Agentic AI PM |

Foundation’s Path of Impact

  1. R&D (a.k.a. tinkering)
  2. Open Source Toolkits and developer resources
  3. Educational resources and accreditation
  4. In-person and online workshops/events worldwide
  5. Regional + global community fabric
  6. AI Safety, education, and responsible deployment tools
  7. Public, Government, and Institutional advisories

Agentics NZ Chapter

Key People

| Name | Role | Background | |——|——|————| | Chris Barlow | Chapter Lead / Primary Organizer | Blog author, event organizer, local model R&D | | Blair Nilsson | Contributor | Presented “How to unscramble an egg” (legacy code transformation) | | Dr Simon McCallum | Guest Speaker / Advisor | PhD in AI (Otago), Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, Game development background, Policy work |

Audience Demographics

From founding event survey:

Community Channels

| Channel | Purpose | |———|———| | Blog | Technical articles, announcements (agentics-nz.fly.dev) | | WhatsApp Group | Ongoing community discussion | | YouTube | Recorded sessions and presentations | | AI Hackerspace Events | Monthly online forums |

Technical Themes & Topics

From Blog Content

1. Continuous Machine Cognition

The community explores what happens when AI can “think” indefinitely with local compute:

Key Concepts:

The GRASP Framework:

  1. Generate — Exhaustive exploration without efficiency constraints
  2. Review — Validate against criteria
  3. Absorb — Update external memory
  4. Synthesise — Consolidate into structured understanding
  5. Persist — Maintain continuity toward goals

2. AI Dreaming Architecture

Proposed phases for machine cognition consolidation:

  1. Experience Capture
  2. Triage Sleep (deduplication, filtering)
  3. Deep Dreaming (compression, abstraction, integration)
  4. Pruning (active forgetting)
  5. Integrity Verification

3. Sovereign AI for NZ

Five pillars identified:

  1. Data Sovereignty — Local training data, Te Reo Māori, Pacific languages
  2. Infrastructure Autonomy — Reduced dependence on foreign cloud providers
  3. Regulatory Sovereignty — Te Tiriti-aligned frameworks
  4. Economic Sovereignty — Domestic capability building
  5. Competitive Advantage — AgTech, environmental AI, public sector innovation

4. Agentic Engineering vs Vibe Coding

| Agentic Engineer | Vibe Coder | |——————|————| | Follows a plan | Follows curiosity | | Defined architecture | Creates by instinct | | Clear process | In the moment |

“Both have value” — The community values both approaches.

5. State of the Art (SOTA) Practices

Educational Framework

Learning Philosophy

From Dr Simon McCallum’s presentation:

“Learning is changing what is in our brains. Humans take time and effort to learn. AI can make some things easy—if you want to learn you need to keep pushing. Move the goalposts—choose your goals and extend.”

Zone of Proximal Development

Questing as Learning

Open Questions for the Community

  1. What is the pathway from novice to productive Agentic Engineer?
  2. How to accredit mentors and curriculum?
  3. How much theory is needed for high-quality AgEng?
  4. What’s the best analogy for general public understanding?
  5. To accredit with NZQA or not?

Craft to Engineering Progression

“We are currently Agentic Crafters. Engineering is when craft becomes unified and tested.”

NZ-Specific Project Ideas

From the founding presentation (“Ideas worth sharing”):

Idea Concept Quest Potential
Gorse Bot 3000 Targeted treatment, greener pastures AgTech, computer vision
Rescue Drone Network Self-organizing emergency response swarms Multi-agent coordination
She’ll Be Right Compliance Automating H&S paperwork for tradies Document processing, NZ regulations
Cooperative Franchise Alliance Member-first, AI-powered franchise framework Business automation
Dairy Herd Therapist Cow wellness and production optimization IoT, AgTech, monitoring
Agentic Engineering Apprenticeships Mentoring and work experience for grads Education, career pathways

The Opportunity (NZ Context)

Why agentic AI matters for New Zealand:

  1. Help SMEs and solo operators reduce paperwork, scale operations
  2. Accelerate existing strengths (AgTech, environmental management)
  3. Solve problems that were once too expensive to solve
  4. Enable hyper-tailored customer-centric business models
  5. Create real pathways for next generation of workers

The Future of Work Bet

More conductors (orchestrating AI), fewer individual performers (doing repetitive tasks)

Events & Activities

Regular Events

Notable Past Events

Upcoming

Resources & Partnerships

Sponsors (from founding event)

Hardware Support

Funding Opportunities

Sister Chapters

Quest Design Insights

Member Motivations

Based on content analysis, guild members are motivated by:

  1. Learning — Building practical agentic engineering skills
  2. Building — Creating real-world applications
  3. Community — Connecting with like-minded practitioners
  4. Sovereignty — Contributing to NZ’s AI independence
  5. Innovation — Exploring cutting-edge concepts

Skill Levels Present

Topics Ripe for Quests

Foundational:

Intermediate:

Advanced:

NZ-Specific:

Community Values for Quest Design

  1. Practical over theoretical — Applied engineering focus
  2. Open source — Sharing and collaboration
  3. Mentorship — Guild master-apprentice model
  4. Safety-conscious — Responsible AI deployment
  5. Local relevance — NZ context and needs
  6. Fail fast — Experimentation encouraged

Links & References

| Resource | URL | |———-|—–| | Agentics NZ Blog | https://agentics-nz.fly.dev/ | | Agentics Foundation | https://agentics.org/ | | Foundation LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/company/agentics-foundation | | Foundation Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/agentics |

Source Documents

Blog Posts Reviewed

  1. AI Hackerspace - 28th Jan ‘26
  2. What Happens When the Machine Never Stops Thinking? (Part 2)
  3. What Happens When the Machine Never Stops Thinking? (Part 1)
  4. Can New Zealand Afford Not to Control Its AI Destiny?
  5. Newsletter #2 - Getting Involved

Changelog

Date Change
2025-01-24 Initial reference document created from PDF, website, and blog content