Three acts. One craft.
Start with the dough
The dough is the raw prompt — your own words, before the machine speaks. Every lesson starts with what you produce: your idea, your instruction, your judgment. The AI responds second, always. That order is not a style choice — it is what keeps the skill yours.
Put it on the counter
Every build ships as a playable link to the Counter — a showcase ranked by process, never popularity. A build made carefully in 18 turns outranks one that went viral in 2. Anyone who plays yours can see the recipe: the first prompt that made it.
The counter finds you
The record of how you direct AI — turns, rejections with reasons, claims you verified, changes real users asked for — is the one thing that cannot be faked. Employers read four numbers and one artifact. They pay to search; your plan lists you, and only your evidence ranks you.
Eight Stops, from first prompt to a connected business.
Every Stop teaches with the same five moves: a short module, a worked example, how the machine actually works, a quiz, and hands-on practice in the live playground. The skill at each Stop is identical for everyone; the thing you build is skinned to your interest — games, music, art, writing, sport, money, science, film, or causes. A music learner and a money learner earn the same certificate, because it certifies the skill, not the subject.
First Prompts ✦ First Prompts
What a prompt is, how to write one that says what you actually mean, and how to refine instead of reroll. You make your first working thing in minutes — and learn why one precise sentence beats three padded paragraphs.
Build a Mini App ✦ Mini App Maker
Turn an idea into a real, working app by breaking it into pieces the machine can nail one at a time. The build math first, the interface after — the order most people get wrong.
Make a 2D Game ✦ Game Builder
Characters, rules, scoring, win and lose states — a complete interactive thing, directed parameter by parameter in the live playground. Your ideas come first; the machine has everyone else’s.
Judge Your Work ✦ Critic’s Eye
The rarest skill on the whole ladder. Spot what is wrong before being told, say what to keep before what to cut — and then the uncomfortable part: hand your build to a real person, say nothing, and watch where they get stuck.
AI Agents ✦ Agent Director
Brief an agent like a teammate: the goal, the line it must not cross, and the moment it must stop and come back to you. Then check its work — because an agent that is never audited is a liability with good manners.
The Long Bake ✦ Working Director
Real sessions, not single prompts. The machine forgets — you keep the thread: feed it the docs, the data, the constraints it cannot know. Use it right — disclosure, privacy, whose voice you are borrowing — and keep your own edge: produce first, audit your own reliance, notice when you stopped thinking. Then take the same ten skills to an essay, a spreadsheet, a plan.
Full Platform ✦ Platform Builder
Plan a whole build, know what you know (and what you don’t), and ship something with real users. This is where the record starts carrying weight a CV never could.
Connect Everything ✦ Systems Founder
The founder stop, 18+. Your build leaves the playground and joins the real stack: wire a real database with Supabase, automate the boring lap with n8n, ship on your own domain with Vercel, connect it all with MCP — and charge for it. The plan buys the tools, never the certificate: Systems Founder still requires a connected system a real person uses.
▸ Stop 8 curves back to Stop 1, one ring wider — same stops, harder builds, every lap.
Ten director skills — the oldest ones there are, made visible.
A better model doesn’t think for you; it waits for you to know what you want. These ten survive every model upgrade. Each one is scored only when there is real evidence — you will never see a made-up percentage.
Seven levels to climb. One honest week, every week.
Levels L1–L7
- L1–L3foundations — prompts, mini apps, your first directed builds
- L4the first hard gate: nobody passes without a build a real person used
- L5–L6agents, systems, work that holds up under someone else’s hands
- L7a shipped platform and a record an employer can read in ninety seconds
Your skills show as evidence bands — starting · growing · solid · strong · leading — never percentages. A skill without enough evidence shows an honest empty slot, not a fake zero.
The week
- Mondaythe Motion — one shared brief, one constraint, ships Friday
- DailyDaily Spark — one drill, one output, two minutes
- SaturdayCrit — three anonymous builds; praise first, then the push
- Sundaythe Cup — fifteen categories, so many kinds of good win
Seasons run eight weeks with Testing at weeks 4 and 7. Sessions have a hard cap that tells you to stop — the metric here is what you made, never how long you stayed.
Everything you make is yours. So is the proof.
The record — your recipe
Every prompt, revision, rejection-with-reason and verification, logged as you work. This is the product: proof of how you direct AI that cannot be faked after the fact.
A coach that only asks
Unsolicited, the coach speaks only in questions, only at boundaries — and goes quiet as you get strong. It never writes your prompt and never supplies your idea.
The Counter
Your builds on a process-ranked showcase where every card shows its full ranking breakdown. No stars, no like-counts, no DMs — one structured sentence of feedback at a time.
Certificates that verify
Eight certificates, one per Stop, issued as Open Badges with a public verify URL. They certify the skill — the same certificate whatever track you build in.
A portfolio employers read
Four numbers and one artifact: shipped builds, real users, changes made from feedback, claims verified. No streak, no points, no game metrics — those never cross over.
Get found — 18+, opt-in
When your record is ready, opt into the employer index. Companies pay to search and to send real paid tasks. You keep the large share. A subscription lists you — only your evidence ranks you.
A dark deck, three lights, and your work in the middle.
This is the actual product — not a mockup. Your home screen leads with one thing to do today; the Studio walks the eight Stops with a live playground you direct in plain words.
Rules we hold ourselves to.
Free means free. The whole journey — Stops 1–7 — the coach, the drills, your record and the pantry (the house library of sprites, sounds, art and templates) cost nothing, forever, with no timer — up to 3 fresh modules a day, unlocked in order as you finish them, practice unlimited, and 10 asset generations a month. Paid is for speed: your own pace, more generations; Founder (18+) unlocks Stop 8’s integrations — never its certificate.
No job promises. We build the record that speaks for you. We will never guarantee employment or income — anyone who does is selling something else.
No ads, ever. Revenue is subscriptions and employers — never your attention. Sessions cap and tell you to stop; time-on-app is our failure metric, not our goal.
Safe for younger makers. Adults first; 13–17 behind a parent gate, in cohort-scoped groups, with no DMs and no public showcase of minors. You keep everything you build if you ever leave.