STARTING LINE / FIELD SERIES 002 / RECENT GRADUATES
Use AI like you already have a job to do.
Ten parts. Ten receipts. Use coding agents, video engines, APIs, connectors,
payments, messaging, GitHub, and Cloudflare to make work somebody can actually inspect.
THE POINT IS NOT TO LOOK AI-FLUENT. THE POINT IS TO BECOME USEFUL WITHOUT HIDING THE TOOL OR YOUR JUDGMENT.
INDUSTRY LOOP / UNIT 010TOUCH EVERY LAYER
AIIS A POWER TOOL
01PROBLEMREAL OWNER
02AGENTBOUND BRIEF
03SYSTEMLIVE EDGES
04PROOFVISIBLE CHANGE
NO PROMPT THEATERSHIP → CHECK → EXPLAIN
DEVICE-LOCAL FIELD RECORD
0 / 10 RECEIPTS
Nothing is uploaded. Mark a part when its receipt exists.
00 / THE OPERATING IDEA
Do not study “AI.” Study a system— then change it.
Industry is made of inputs, decisions, handoffs, money, messages, media, and consequences. The fastest way in is to pick one small loop and make it clearer, faster, safer, or more alive.
Your advantage as a recent graduate is not pretending to have thirty years of context. It is learning quickly, using the new tools directly, and leaving unusually clear proof.
01 / THE TEN-PART SERIES
Ten receipts. One working loop.
Move in order the first time. Each receipt is small enough to finish and strong enough to show how you think.
FIELD TOOL / WORKING BRIEF COMPILER
Give the agent a finish line.
Build a brief before you touch a model. The text stays in this browser and is not stored or sent.
GOAL＋CONTEXT＋CONSTRAINTS＋DONE WHEN
01
THE LIVE WIRE / 45–90 MIN
Find a problem with a pulse.
Do not begin with “What can AI do?”
Begin with a repeated moment where somebody waits, copies, searches, reconciles, drafts, misses context, or cannot see what happened. Watch it once before proposing anything.
Name the owner and the person affected.
Capture the current input, decision, output, and failure mode.
Choose one boundary: one team, one hour, one artifact, one week.
Write what cannot be traded away—privacy, consent, accuracy, tone, or access.
FIELD TEST
If the owner cannot tell whether your work helped, the brief is still too vague.
02
CODING AGENTS / 60–120 MIN
Put Fable and Sol on the same brief.
Treat the model as a worker inside a system.
Give it the repository, the rules, the finish line, and permission boundaries. Ask it to inspect before editing, test before claiming, and show the diff. Use a quality-first model when the work is ambiguous or consequential; use faster models for clear, repeatable passes.
CLAUDE FABLE 5Ambitious, long-running coding work
Try it on a broad implementation that needs sustained planning and self-checking.
MODEL DESCRIPTIONS CHECKED AUGUST 2, 2026. ACCESS, NAMES, AND TERMS CHANGE—CHECK THE SOURCE.
STARTER PROMPT
Inspect this repository before changing it.
Goal: [paste the working brief]
Constraints: preserve existing behavior, do not expose secrets or private data, and keep changes scoped.
Done when: the requested behavior works, relevant tests pass, and you have reviewed the diff.
First report the owning files and your plan. Then implement, test, inspect the result, and name anything you could not verify.
03
WORKING INTERFACE / 90–180 MIN
Make the smallest thing people can touch.
A slide is not a prototype.
Ask the coding agent to make one working path: upload one safe sample, transform one record, show one decision, or complete one small action. A plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript prototype is enough if the behavior is real.
Sketch the happy path and one failure path.
Use real structure and representative sample data.
Add keyboard access, narrow-screen layout, and a clear empty state.
Write one automated check for the outcome that matters most.
Watch another person attempt it without coaching.
DOASK THE AGENT TO RUN ITTHENTOUCH IT YOURSELFTHENWATCH SOMEBODY ELSE
04
APIs / 60–120 MIN
Touch one real API.
Learn the contract, not only the SDK.
An API is a boundary between systems. Read the official quickstart. Make one request by hand. Inspect the exact response. Then let the agent build the integration around evidence instead of memory.
REQUESTMethod · URL · auth · body
RESPONSEStatus · fields · errors · limits
SECRETServer-side · scoped · never logged
TESTMock failure · timeout · malformed data
Do not paste a production key into a prompt, commit it to Git, or expose it in browser code. Start with test credentials and the least access possible.
05
CONNECTORS + WEBHOOKS / 60–150 MIN
Connect the work without connecting everything.
Choose the smallest bridge.
APIYour product calls another system.Use for explicit application logic.
CONNECTOR / MCPAn agent needs governed context or tools.Start read-only with one clear workflow.
WEBHOOKAnother system pushes an event to yours.Verify signatures and handle retries.
Connect GitHub when the work lives in issues and pull requests. Connect Drive when the source is a maintained document. Connect Slack when a human needs a review or alert. Do not give a tool write access merely because it is available.
Write the data path in one sentence.
Choose read-only or draft-only for the first run.
Name the approval before any send, publish, delete, or payment.
Log what happened without logging private content.
Make a five-shot board with subject, action, framing, camera movement, duration, sound, and continuity. Run the same board through at least two engines. You are testing control and usefulness—not collecting beautiful accidents.
Bring the useful generations into an editor. Premiere, Resolve, Final Cut, CapCut, or another real timeline is where you decide pace, sequence, sound, captions, color, and what does not belong.
Cut for the intended viewer and platform—not for the model demo.
Replace weak generated sound; mix dialogue, music, and room tone.
Add accurate captions and inspect every frame with text or hands.
Keep a provenance note: source material, models, edits, permissions.
Generation proposes frames. Editing decides what the work means.
08
STRIPE / 90–180 MIN
Make money move—safely, in test mode.
A button is not a payment system.
Use Stripe’s hosted Checkout first. Create the session on the server, redirect to Stripe, verify the signed webhook, and fulfill from confirmed server state—not from the success page.
PENDING→CONFIRMED→FULFILLED↘REFUNDED / DISPUTED
Use test keys and Stripe test mode.
Never collect or store raw card numbers yourself.
Verify webhook signatures and make handlers idempotent.
Record pending, confirmed, refunded, and disputed distinctly.
Build one opt-in flow to your own verified test number: a useful alert, a replyable question, or a voice status line. Treat consent, quiet hours, identity, opt-out, and delivery state as product requirements.
State exactly what a person is opting into.
Use test credentials or a controlled verified-number path.
Validate incoming Twilio webhook signatures.
Handle STOP, HELP, errors, and duplicate events.
Do not import a contact list or begin outreach from this exercise.
Put the work in a GitHub repository. Use a branch, make an intentional commit, open a pull request, and let the checks speak. Deploy a preview to Cloudflare Pages. Then verify the final canonical URL—not only the preview.
You can touch the whole stack before anyone has time to tell you that you are not allowed to understand it.Do it carefully. Ask permission where consequences begin. Leave the system easier to inspect than you found it.
THE FINISH LINE / YOUR FIRST INDUSTRY RECEIPT
Ten tools are not the achievement. One useful loop is.