Teach with
the Desk.

These are the lessons of the Heidelberg AI Curriculum that name the Desk or one of its apps, as we read them on 24 September 2026.

• Which laptops. Windows 11 on an Intel or AMD processor gets the installer with the window; Windows 10 has not been tried. A Mac with Apple Silicon and Linux on Intel or AMD get an archive; on Linux it is the command line only. There is nothing for Windows on ARM and nothing for a Mac with an Intel processor.
• Managed laptops. The Desk itself needs no administrator rights. Setting up Podman asks Windows for permission once. Students with a laptop from an employer ask their IT first.
• Install at home, not in the room. The Desk is a download of 3 MB. The apps are large: n8n 1.2 GB, Gitea 0.2 GB, Open WebUI with Ollama about 10 GB, and a model on top. Thirty laptops fetching that over one room’s network has not been tried.
• n8n’s download. n8n’s own registry refused twice on our test computer (“pull rate limit”), each time after two minutes of waiting. From 0.2.0-alpha.8 the Desk asks Docker Hub first. Docker Hub counts downloads per internet address, and a classroom usually shares one. Another reason to install before the session.
• Disk and memory. With n8n, Gitea and one small app installed, Podman used 3.3 GB of disk and 1.8 GB of memory on our test laptop, which has 16 GB. With Open WebUI, Ollama and a model of 2 GB on top, Podman used 7.8 GB of memory, and the two apps are a download of 10 GB. A laptop with 8 GB has not been tried.
• Ready or not. Ask every student to open the Desk before the session. The window says “Local apps can run” when Podman works. On the command line, desk doctor says the same.
• The same version for all. From 0.2.0-alpha.8 the Desk says when a newer version is out and updates on one click. An earlier version is installed over once, by hand. How updates work.

A suggestion, built from what we tried on one laptop. We have not run it with a class.

• 1. Open the Desk. Everybody sees “Local apps can run”. Who does not, presses “Set up Podman” or reads When it fails.
• 2. Install and open n8n. “Install and open” in the App Store, then the owner account. What n8n shows first.
• 3. Build one small workflow. The curriculum’s first automation is in T05-L01 · Your First Automation: Build It, Break It, Switch It Off.
• 4. Stop and start. “Stop” on n8n’s card, then “Open” again. The workflow is still there. This is the moment to say where the work lives: on this laptop, in a volume that Podman keeps.
• 5. Take the work out. Everybody downloads their workflow as a file. That file is what they keep and what you can collect.

• It is on the student’s laptop only. Every app answers at an address that starts with 127.0.0.1, which works on that laptop and nowhere else. You cannot open a student’s n8n from your computer. In the room you look at their screen.
• n8n. A workflow is downloaded as one file from the editor’s menu. You can import that file into your own n8n and run it.
• Gitea. A repository is downloaded as a ZIP file from its page, or pushed with Git to a server you share with the class, for example your institute’s.
• Open WebUI. We have not tried its export of chats.
• No backup. The Desk has no backup command yet. What a student does not export exists once, on that laptop. Removing Podman’s machine deletes it. Where things are.
• The alpha note. Every page says: export any work you want to keep. That is meant literally for graded work.

• A recipe is one text file. It names a published container image, a port and where the data lives. A student can write one for an app the course needs. How a recipe is written.
• A shelf is a list of recipes at a web address. Put the list and the recipes anywhere that serves files over https, give students the address, and they add it once under “Shelves”. Your apps then stand in their App Store, marked with where they come from. How a shelf works.
• The Desk’s own shelf. Students hand in a recipe on the hand-in page with the course code. The Desk team reads it, tries the app and decides. What is checked.
• What a recipe cannot do. It cannot reach folders of the student’s computer, open a port to the network or ask for extra rights. The Desk refuses such a file and names the line.

• A class. Every trial so far used one computer at a time. Nobody has installed the Desk with thirty students in one room.
• A real student. The Desk team installed and used it. A student who had never seen it has not.
• A lesson from start to end. We went through each app’s first screens. We have not worked through a whole lesson of the curriculum in the Desk’s apps.
• Small and locked-down laptops. 8 GB of memory, a nearly full disk, a laptop where the student may not install programs, a computer without the Windows part that Podman needs.
• The window on a Mac. It opened in a test; nobody has looked at it.
• A keyboard only, or a screen reader.

What the Desk puts on a laptop and how it is removed again is on the help page: On your computer, Remove it. What the website and the Desk record is on its own page.