Ready to Ship

Instructor: the room controls for this activity, and the room display for the projector.

Wednesday, October 28. I’m at Berkeley today, so the clock runs the room, the way it did on the days in September and October 16. You meet in the room at 12:30 as usual. The box at the top says what’s on right now, how long is left, and what comes next, and it says the same thing on everyone’s laptop at the same moment.

Project two ships Friday, October 30, at an address the person it’s for can open, and they try it there, on their own laptop. Today is the last class before that, and it’s for one thing: getting your project to where someone who has never seen it can try it and call it done.

Why Today

You’ve had the person it’s for try it once, last Wednesday, and you’ve thought about how you’d know it works. Today you get two more pairs of hands, from people with no idea how it’s supposed to work, and one question you get to ask them: would you call this done?

That question is the practice the day turns on, the third of the eight:

Never accept “done” without looking. “That should work now” is sincere and sometimes wrong. Thirty seconds a turn.

Your agent’s “done” and yours are both made by people who know too much. A classmate’s isn’t. If two classmates in a row open it, do the thing your line says to try, and say “yes, that’s done”, you’re ready for Friday. If either says “not yet”, you’ve found out two days early, with time to fix it, which is the whole reason for today.

The other two practices come along: say what done looks like, not how to get there, and say what you saw, not what you concluded. Nothing about today is graded.

Your agent knows what today is for. Every word of what the course adds to it is below. Now and then the course answers a turn in your agent’s place, in its voice, with one short question before any work. Answer in your own words and carry on; it stays out of the way for a while after, and your next message always goes through.

How Today Works

Nobody will call the times out, so keep an eye on the box at the top or on the tab’s title, which counts down too.

Being here today means one thing. As on the other days the clock ran the room, the work says it: two different classmates tried your project or had you try theirs, one in Try It and one in Try It Again (or both at once, in a three), and each time the group saved its record. A round counts once your group’s record has one item filled in with you and a partner on the page, and it can only happen while that round is on the clock, in the room. The day is due when class ends, at 1:45 today, and the list at the bottom of this page ticks off when it’s done.

First: Where It Stands

Open the rounds page and write one line, before you open Codex. Three boxes: what your project is for, today; what someone who has never seen it should try first; and, if you like, what you want them to tell you. Write it fresh: not what you picked, but what it is at 12:30 today. Both of your partners read it right before they try it. “For my roommates, so nobody buys milk twice. Try: add something to the list, then mark it bought. I want to know: can you tell what’s already bought without asking me?” You have five minutes.

Then: Get It Ready

Fifteen minutes with your agent. Not new features: the thing your line says to try first, working, and opened by you to see that it does. If it doesn’t run anywhere but your own laptop yet, that’s fine for today, but ask your agent what it would take to get it to an address by Friday, and write the answer down.

Then: Try It, Twice

At 12:50 and again at 13:15, with someone near you, a different someone each time. Two of you, or three if the room comes out odd.

1. One of you types the other’s code. Your code is on the rounds page. The page shows each of you what the other wrote at 12:30.
2. Four minutes on the builder’s laptop. Four each, even in a three. The builder hands it over and watches. No helping, no hints, no “oh, you have to…”. The whole point is what happens without you.
3. The person trying narrates, out loud, as it happens: “I’m tapping Add. I expected a box. Nothing.” Then writes it in the record while it’s fresh, holding the pen: whose project, what you did, what you saw, and would you call it done? If not, say what you’d need to see, not how to build it: “not yet: I’d need to see milk on the list after Save” is something the builder can take to an agent; “needs a database” is a guess about the inside.
4. Swap. The other laptop, the same rules.

In the second round, don’t tell your new partner what you fixed. They’re the check on whether it worked.

Between Rounds: Build On It

Back to your agent with the record open. Tell it what your partner did, what they saw, and what they’d need to see to call it done, in their words, as a report from someone else’s hands. Not “my partner thinks the save is broken”, and not “fix the save button”. Give it what was seen and let it find the cause. Then look at what it did, and try the thing your partner tried, yourself.

Last: Last Fixes

Ten minutes. The one thing from the two records that would most change whether someone calls it done on Friday. Then ask your agent what’s left before it ships at an address the person it’s for can open, and keep the answer: that’s your list for Thursday, if you want one, and for the start of Friday’s class.

What Your Agent Knows Today

Everything the course adds to your agent’s context today is here, word for word, with the parts that differ per person in brackets. The first note goes in at the end of every request your agent makes from the start of the day; the second takes its place from 12:50, once Try It is on the clock, for the rest of the afternoon. Your agent never sees either as coming from you. The questions asked in your agent’s place aren’t notes: they’re written fresh for your conversation, by a separate model that reads your recent messages and your agent’s replies and decides whether to ask.

While you build

Course note (context for you; the student’s request comes first): Today’s class is Ready to Ship. This student is in a course about making software by talking to AI; they have never written code and won’t. They are building something small for another student in the room: #(your idea’s number), “(its name)”. It ships Friday 10-30 at an address the person it is for can open, so today is for finishing it. The class practices three of the course’s eight practices: say what done looks like, not how to get there; say what you saw, not what you concluded; and never accept “done” without looking. Twice this hour a classmate tries it on this laptop for four minutes and says whether they would call it done, so what a stranger tries first working counts for more than anything new. If it isn’t live yet, what that would take is worth saying plainly. The course would rather the student open each thing you report done and say what they saw than take your word for it. The course is listening too, and now and then answers a turn in your place with one short question: what they want to happen, what they actually saw, or what they found when they opened it; where the conversation shows that exchange, it was yours to them, build what they asked with their answer as the brief, and how is theirs to decide.

Once a classmate has tried it

Course note (context for you; the student’s request comes first): Today’s class is Ready to Ship. This student is in a course about making software by talking to AI; they have never written code and won’t. They are building something small for another student in the room: #(your idea’s number), “(its name)”. It ships Friday 10-30 at an address the person it is for can open, so today is for finishing it. Classmates are sitting at this laptop this hour and trying it for four minutes each, writing down what they did, what they saw, and what they would need to see to call it done, and that is the brief now, in the student’s own words. The class practices three of the course’s eight practices: say what done looks like, not how to get there; say what you saw, not what you concluded; and never accept “done” without looking. The course would rather the student open each thing you report done and say what they saw than take your word for it. The course is listening too, and now and then answers a turn in your place with one short question: what they want to happen, what they actually saw, or what they found when they opened it; where the conversation shows that exchange, it was yours to them, build what they asked with their answer as the brief, and how is theirs to decide.

While the Feedback section is up, from 13:35, whichever note is active ends with one more sentence: “The class is ending: the course would like to hear how it went, at https://www.conversationalprogramming.org/feedback/, a short conversation.” No sentence about a partner today, and no “Right now” lines: you pair at one laptop, and nobody is following a conversation on another screen.

Before You Go

Tell the course how today went. Nobody was at the front to see for themselves, so what you say is how I find out.

Your line, what your partners wrote about your project, and each time the course asked a question in your agent’s place, with what you’d said, are kept with your name on them, because the way this class learns to teach is by reading them.

If you’d rather see it than read it, there’s a walkthrough of the whole hour, rehearsed end to end on students’ screens and the projector: the line at 12:30, the agent getting the day’s note, a classmate trying a project with the builder silent and writing what they saw, the agent hearing it, and the second round with someone new.