QA background here, recently building a security tool (accguard) with heavy AI assistance. My stack:

Claude and ChatGPT in parallel — I describe the same problem to both, compare the answers, push back on both. The disagreements are where the learning happens. Claude Code for longer sessions where context needs to persist across files TryHackMe for structured security learning alongside the building GitHub Actions for CI — AI helped me write the workflow, I understand it now because I had to debug it

The shift that actually changed my workflow: stopped asking AI to write code for me, started asking it to explain what broke and why. The understanding compounds faster that way. For your workshop participants coming from zero: the most valuable thing isn't the tool, it's learning to describe problems precisely. That skill transfers whether the AI gets better or worse.