Curious about AI Agents and coding?

Whether you're brand new to AI, want to work smarter with it, or are building something with it, book a call and you'll leave with clear, practical next steps. I'll also share insights and keep you updated on the latest AI tools in the market.

I'll have your questions answered

Set up your personal AI agent

Pick 15, 30, or 60 minutes, whatever fits. No prep needed, no question too basic.

300+ people trained, from total beginners to founders

Melvin Vivas smiling at the boom mic in his studio

WHAT PEOPLE SAY AFTER A SESSION

“I had a very positive experience speaking with Mr. Melvin. He was nice, cheerful, and very encouraging throughout the conversation.”

300+

People trained

50+

Mentees, from students to founders

Personal AI Agent Setup

Personal AI Agent Setup Service

I set up Hermes, an open-source personal AI agent with its own memory that learns new skills and adapts to you, on the computer you already own. One agent set up directly, or several managed with GAIA, my setup tool. You choose.

Hermes is the agent: it works for you, not just answers questions
GAIA is optional: my tool for running multiple private agents on one computer
Your data stays on your machine, not on someone else's servers
Hands-on setup call, or a free 15-minute consultation first

See the Setup Service Free 15-Min Consultation

Optional GAIA dashboard managing multiple Hermes AI agents on one computer

Optional GAIA tool managing Hermes agentsLearn more

Wherever you are with AI, there's a call for you

Every session is 1-on-1 and tailored to you. Book 15, 30, or 60 minutes, whatever your question needs. No question is too small: if it's about AI, it's on the table.

Personal AI

New to AI? Perfect, start here. I'll help you set up your own AI agent for everyday life: notes, research, planning, right inside the chat apps you already use.

See the Setup Service

AI at Work

Learn to get real work done faster with AI: simple tools and workflows you can start using the same day, whatever your job is.

Talk about AI at work

Build & Integrate

Building a product? Get a second brain on what to build, how to add AI to it, and how to go from idea to something real.

Talk through your build

Updated August 4, 2026

Latest AI news for builders and leaders

Fresh artificial intelligence news, model releases, AI agent updates, research, and enterprise AI announcements curated from primary sources.

View all AI news

ModelsAug 3, 2026

Alibaba Qwen3.8-Max: 2.4T MoE with Max-class open weights next week

Alibaba released Qwen3.8-Max, the most capable Qwen model to date—a 2.4-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts that activates about 95B parameters per request, with a context window up to 1 million tokens. Built on the Qwen 3.5 architecture, it targets coding, real-world work, research, and long-horizon agent tasks, and Alibaba says it is the first Max-class Qwen model it will open-source (weights planned next week on Hugging Face and ModelScope). The model is available now via QwenCloud / Alibaba Cloud Model Studio APIs, including OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible endpoints for coding agents.

Source: Alibaba CloudRead source

ModelsAug 3, 2026

MiniMax H3 open-sources omni-modal video weights on Hugging Face

Three days after launching H3 (Hailuo 3.0) as an API product, MiniMax published open weights for its general-purpose omni-modal video model on Hugging Face (MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3) and ModelScope. The release ships two BF16 checkpoints—Base FL2VA (text / first-last-frame to audio-video) and Base Ref2VA (multimodal reference-to-audio-video)—generating up to 15 seconds with native stereo audio; default open generation is 768p, while the hosted H3-Regenerate-2K path and H3-Context-IR preprocessing remain API-side for now. Weights are under the MiniMax H3 Community License Agreement.

Source: MiniMaxRead source

AgentsAug 3, 2026

Alibaba QwenWork: workplace AI agent platform enters public beta

Alibaba opened a public beta of QwenWork, an all-in-one workplace AI agent platform that unifies desktop, cloud, and enterprise collaboration agents built from QoderWork, MuleRun, and Wukong. Users in China can access a web workspace or desktop client now, with deeper DingTalk embedding planned for the collaboration suite that serves more than 20 million organizations. The platform pairs autonomous agents with multimodal generation and web-app building, offers Economy through Flagship model tiers on a subscription-plus-credits plan, and highlights Qwen3.8 as a flagship option starting August 3.

Source: Alibaba CloudRead source

Meet Your Mentor

25+yrs

300+trained

Book an AI Q&A Call Connect on LinkedIn

Melvin Vivas

Engineer, mentor, and your friendly guide to AI

I help everyday people, professionals, and founders make sense of AI, and no question is too basic. Most of my mentees started exactly where you are now.

Behind that is 25 years of engineering across banking, fintech, and enterprise. These days it's hands-on work building AI apps and running my own daily life on a personal AI agent.

Whether you're a student, a working professional, a leader, or a founder, you'll get someone who's done the work and explains it in plain language.

Senior roles at Standard Chartered Bank & Ohmyhome (Nasdaq)

Built AI Dream Photo, an AI photo app used by real customers

Building aibackends.com, free open-source AI tools for developers

Building skillsbento.com, an AI Agent Skills marketplace

Speaker at NTU Singapore, PSIA, and DICT Philippines

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) Open Mentoring: Connecting Minds

Live & unscripted

Watch my past livestreams

The easiest way to get a feel for how I explain things: watch me build with AI, live. No edits, no script, mistakes and all.

Let's explore ChatGPT / OpenAI APIs

A relaxed walk through the OpenAI platform and APIs, explained from scratch.

Build a React Native ChatGPT app with Cursor, OpenAI, and Expo

A full app built live, from empty folder to working AI chat on a phone.

Enrich your Life and Work with AI

A talk on bringing AI into your everyday life and work, in plain language.

Watch my NTU Singapore workshop demo More livestreams on YouTube

My personal AI

What I actually ask my AI

These are real conversations with my personal AI agent lately:

“Every hour during trading hours, remind me about my stock investments”“Read these screenshots from my kids' school app and remind me of the deadlines”“What happened at the F1 British Grand Prix?”“Any Wimbledon updates?”“Find me a decent monitor to replace my old one”“What Korean drama should I watch next?”“Give me some non-software business ideas”“Summarize this video posted on X”“Make me a video”

Notice anything? None of it is about coding. My AI is a personal agent that helps me run everyday life. You can have one too. I'll set up Hermes on your computer (GAIA is optional if you want multiple agents), around your own routines.

Get your own personal agent Book a call

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