The 7 stages of AI: where are you on the ladder?

🎬 Recorded live at LEDEX event on May 2026, in Faro, Portugal. Most AI initiatives stall at prompt-and-paste, never moving a company's P&L because they stop one or two rungs up a 7-stage ladder that ends in fully autonomous pipelines. In this video, you will learn the 7 stages of AI maturity from prompting to agentic pipelines, why skills and MCP servers turn AI into a company-wide baseline, and how to manage agent teams across marketing, sales, and ops. Ignácio, automation lead at Mechanism Ventures, shares his live setup — a manager agent that spawns 50 sub-agents for one market-research job, his €200 subscription on a $50,000 machine, and the 4-step process to hire your first agent. 👉 Our website: https://ledex.events/ 👉 Join next LEDEX Forum in Portugal: https://ledexforum.com/ Resources mentioned in the video: 👉 Manus AI - get 500 credits, plus 300 daily: https://go.ledex.events/manus ______________ 🔶 Topics covered in the video: ➤ 00:00 Audience polls and AI use today ➤ 02:46 Why AI initiatives don't move your P&L ➤ 03:54 The 7-step ladder from prompting to pipelines ➤ 06:52 Prompting and templates: the starting line ➤ 08:13 Tools layer: CRM, calendar, Google Drive ➤ 14:01 Skills: documenting your company's disciplines ➤ 19:51 MCP servers: the protected intelligence layer ➤ 26:24 Agentic loop: manager + sub-agents in parallel ➤ 28:44 50 sub-agents writing one market research ➤ 30:13 The dream: full pipelines that run while you sleep ➤ 35:54 Guardrails: the lawyer's hidden-text hack ➤ 38:25 Inside the stack: 9 tabs and $50K rig ______________ 🔶 About Ignácio Correia Ignácio Correia is Senior Product Designer and Automation Lead at Mechanism Ventures, where he designs products and builds the AI workflows that power a portfolio of companies. He is not a consultant or an academic — he is a practitioner. Every agent, workflow, and example in this talk is something he built and uses daily, which makes his talks unusually credible: the speaker is the case study. Based in Portugal, Ignácio is one of the most hands-on agentic-AI practitioners in the LEDEX community. 👉 Connect with Ignácio: ➤   / igcorreia   ______________ 🔶 About Augustas Kligys Augustas Kligys is the Chief Visionary behind LEDEX, an ecosystem born to connect business leaders and creators around AI, innovation, and growth. Based in Portugal, Augustas began his journey in 2016 by building a community for Amazon sellers worldwide, recording more than 1,000 videos and interviewing hundreds of industry experts. After years of experience helping entrepreneurs share knowledge across borders, he turned his focus to creating LEDEX – bringing that same spirit of connection and learning to the Algarve through high-impact events and digital talks that inspire real business action. ______________ 🔶 About LEDEX LEDEX is a space where professionals, creators, and innovators meet to exchange practical insights, build connections, and grow together. With a team experienced in organizing international B2B events across five countries, LEDEX brings that know-how to Portugal through three connected initiatives: LEDEX Talks (online discussions with global experts), LEDEX Events (local business gatherings), and LEDEX Forum (the flagship conference). Focused on action and collaboration, LEDEX aims to become the leading destination for professional development and meaningful business dialogue in the region. 👉 Our website: https://ledex.events/ 👉 Join next LEDEX Forum in Portugal: https://ledexforum.com/