PREVENTING KIDS FROM
BECOMING MEAT PUPPETS
FOR A CHAT BOT

Notes from the Saaspocalypse

Gregory Senyshyn // Founder, Asynchronous Academy
Presentation for waterloo.dev • University of Waterloo

26% of university entrants below OECD baseline

OHRC Right to Read Report (2024)

46% report moderate to serious psychological distress

CAMH OSDUHS Survey

60% miss 10% or more of classes

Ontario Ministry of Education

81.4 ➔ 88.2 median university entry grade 2006–2021

Council of Ontario Universities

How?

5 KIDS
IN ONTARIO

ONTARIOLITERACY.CA

Ontario High School Market Scale

~630,000 All High School Students in Ontario

Gr. 9

1/4 Grade 10 (~155k)

Gr. 11

Gr. 12

~48,000 All Ontario Private High Schools Combined (~7.5% of Province)

1,000 Students Thriving Solo Online Private School (~$500k+ ARR)

$0/MO

Free Tier

57 ARM64 Lambdas • 14 DynamoDB Tables • CloudFront (1 TB/mo) • Cognito (50k Free MAUs)

~$22

Fixed Costs

AWS WAF Perimeter Defense + Route53 DNS + KMS PII Key + 23 CloudWatch Alarms Across 29 Microservices

~2¢

Open-Weight AI (DeepInfra)

Gemma 4 31B + FLUX.1 Schnell (~2¢ per Full 20-Chapter RPG + 20 Portraits vs. $2.00+ Frontier)

My Two Nightmares

01

Losing Student Work

02

Getting Hacked for $100k of LLM Distilling

4-Layer Zero-Loss Backups (~50¢/mo)

L1

localStorage Keystroke Autosave

L2

DynamoDB PITR + S3 Bucket Versioning

L3

Daily AWS Backup + 30-Day WORM Lock

L4

Monthly Export to Google Drive

Redundant Kill Switches

WAF

Edge Rate-Limiting & Burst Caps

SSM

Lambda Kill Switch

IAM

AWS BudgetsAction

But, Why?

MY PEDAGOGICAL
BEEFS

01

Video-Based Communication

02

Inquiry-Based Learning

03

AI Exists

BEEF #1

Bone JK, Bu F, Sonke JK, Fancourt D. The decline in reading for pleasure over 20 years of the American Time Use Survey. iScience. 2025 Aug 20;28(9):113288.

01

Close Reading

02

Written Essay

03

Video Argument

1500 BC

Vedic Scholars

370 BC

Socrates (Phaedrus)

2026

Elon Musk

2026

Sam Altman

2026

TBD

BEEF #2

Q1

"Why did Quebec oppose conscription in 1917, and how did French vs. English newspapers frame the crisis?"

Q2

"How did the shift to a wartime economy transform daily life for Canadian factory workers and women?"

Q3

"What caused the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, and whose interests did the government protect?"

BEEF #3

Pop Quiz

Interactive Dilemma

Which of these tasks should you NEVER give an LLM?

A

Drilling Through a Joist

Asking "How many 1/2" holes can I drill through a joist without my second floor collapsing?"

B

Generating a Password

Asking for a secure, 16-character randomized string for your production database.

C

Leftover Food Poisoning

Asking "Will I get food poisoning from these leftovers?" based on how long they sat out.

D

Natural Family Planning

Asking "Based on my cycle calendar, what are the odds I'll get pregnant tonight?"

scan to follow on IG for candy!

@asyncacademy

What?

01

Oracular Wisdom

02

Short Attention Span

03

Never Cleans Their Room

PREVENTING
MUTINY

01

Design Your Course

02

Prepare Your Materials

03

Check the Rubric

LLMS AREN'T
MAGIC

01

Good Exemplars

02

Descriptive Feedback

03

Self-Assessment Tools

SET UP YOUR
CLASSROOM

A Well-Equipped Agent Needs:

ENV

Sandbox & Read-Only Prod

MAIL

Email Address

IAC

Isolated Stacks: Monorepo, IaC & SSM

Protect the Context Window

MAP

Monorepo Map & Schema Dictionary

PACK

<1,000-Line Files & JSON Manifests

AST

AST-Grep Over Regex Guessing

YOUR SANITY DEPENDS ON

END-TO-END TESTS

The Self-Healing Loop

SNS

LAMBDA / JS / E2E ERROR → ErrorTicketsTopic

Backend Lambdas, browser JS/CSP listener (/client-error), CloudWatch logs, & 6 AM E2E canary publish PII-masked tracebacks to SNS

ISSUE

ErrorTicketCreator → GITHUB ISSUE

Decrypts GitHub token via KMS (PiiKey) & opens [Prod Error] issue labeled auto-heal & Jules

WATCH

LABEL WEBHOOK → gemini-agent.yml & JULES

GitHub Actions (issues: [opened, labeled]) & Jules App watch for auto-heal, react with 👀, & boot cloud runner

FIX

OIDC SANDBOX → REPRODUCE & PATCH

Assumes JulesSandbox (ca-central-1), runs pack_context.py, reproduces in-memory + E2E, & writes regression test

PR

PASSING PULL REQUEST BY MORNING

Pushes branch gemini/issue-N with green pytest suite & emails verified PR before coffee

Check the Rubric

01

"What is the worst part of this repo?"

02

"Does this solution represent a 'gold standard' implementation?"

03

"Were there any parts of this task that were particularly token-inefficient?"

The Result: 29 Microservices

8 MOS

Evenings & Weekends

Built while working a full-time day job with zero engineering hires

<$25/MO

AWS Dev & Prod (Each)

Scale-to-zero serverless in ca-central-1 with 4-layer WORM backups & budget kill switches

$25/MO

Google AI Plan

Zero $1,000/mo API token overages—just disciplined context maps & self-healing E2E tests

DRUM ROLL
PLEASE

WELCOME,
INVOLUNTARY TEACHERS

QUESTIONS & DISCUSSION

Asynchronous Academy • waterloo.dev

Gregory Senyshyn // Founder, Asynchronous Academy • Context Window Cleaner
asyncacademy.ca

8 MOSEvenings & Weekends

<$25/MOAWS Dev & Prod Each

$25/MOGoogle AI Plan

The Involuntary Teachers' Handbook (GitHub & Team Training) I don't just work with kids; I also do trainings for grown-ups. github.com/gregorysenyshyn/involuntary-teachers-handbook