> Markdown version of [/events/conference-india-2026/sessions/1980-build-a-zero-cost-ai](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/conference-india-2026/sessions/1980-build-a-zero-cost-ai). Every page supports `.md` or `Accept: text/markdown`. Links point to the HTML versions so they work for humans too. Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md).

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# Build a Zero-Cost AI Agent in Your Browser


- **Event:** Conference India 2026

## Description

Every AI tutorial starts the same way: sign up for an API key, add a credit card, spin up a server. For working developers, that's friction. For students, it's a wall.

This workshop skips all of that. Participants build a working AI agent in a single HTML file: streaming chat, a custom persona, multi-turn memory, and agentic tool-calling. The model runs in the browser tab. No API keys, no servers, no cloud bill.

The stack is open-source: Google's Gemma 2 2B (4-bit quantized), WebLLM from MLC-AI (an OpenAI-compatible API from a single CDN import), and WebGPU for GPU-accelerated inference natively in the browser.

Four hands-on phases:

Phase 1 - The AI Loop (40 min): Load a quantized model, run a chat completion, add token streaming, and wire multi-turn memory.

Phase 2 - Chat UI (20 min): Styled chat application with message bubbles, scroll container, and loading progress. CSS is provided so participants can focus on the JS logic.

Phase 3 - Make It Yours (40 min): Custom personas, prompt engineering, then a live demo of agentic tool-calling where the model calls Wikipedia and weather APIs through structured output markers parsed and executed in a loop.

Phase 4 - Ship It (15 min): Save the single HTML file and host.

The WebLLM API mirrors OpenAI's chat.completions interface, so everything learned here transfers directly to cloud-hosted models. 

Note that every phase (1-4) includes a checkpoint file so nobody falls behind.

## Speakers

### [Aishwarya Mathuria](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@aishwarya-mathuria)

Computer Scientist
### [Nishant Thakur](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@nishant-thakur)

Senior Computer Scientist at Adobe


## Related talks at this congress

- [Teaching AI Coding Agents to Build It Right the First Time](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/conference-india-2026/sessions/1995-teaching-ai-coding) — Sajeetharan Sinnathurai
- [Architecting Trusted AI: Coupling Multi-Agent Systems with dbt Semantic Store for Zero-Hallucination](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/conference-india-2026/sessions/1976-architecting-trusted) — Pushkar Mishra
- [Java is Coming for Python’s Lunch: The Rise of JVM AI Agents](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/conference-india-2026/sessions/1988-java-is-coming-for) — Frederik Pietzko
- [Beyond File Dumps: Context Engineering for Coding Agents](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/conference-india-2026/sessions/1979-beyond-file-dumps) — Animesh Dutta

## Watch remotely

Can’t make it to Bengaluru? Watch this session live with Pro. You also get:

- All full videos, bookmarks, and playlists
- World Congress livestreams

[See pricing](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/pricing)

## Links

- [Get tickets](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/conference-india/tickets)