Ready

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

Wednesday, October 21. Two weeks ago you picked an idea someone else in this room proposed, and since then you’ve been building it for them. Today they try it for the first time, while there’s still time to build on what they find. Project two isn’t over today: it ships Friday, October 30, at an address the person it’s for can open, and Wednesday, October 28 is for finishing it.

Why Today

So far the only person who has used what you built is you, and on Friday a classmate who knew nothing about it. Both of those were rehearsals. The person who proposed the idea has a picture in their head of what it was for, and when they sit down at your laptop they’ll find out how close you got, and so will you. Nine days before it ships is the right time to find out: whatever they run into today, you have a week and a half to fix.

What you’ll learn from watching them is something your agent can’t tell you. Your agent checks what it can see. What it can’t see is a person who doesn’t know which button to press first, or who expected the project to do something you never asked for. That’s what the person it’s for brings, and it’s why today is them at your laptop and you saying nothing. On Friday we’ll come back to the other half, checking what your agent tells you, the third of the eight practices:

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

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. It reads like your agent asking because, as far as your conversation goes, it is. Answer in your own words and carry on; your next message always goes through.

How Today Works

Geoff moves the room from one to the next; your pair page says which is on. The first five minutes are for arriving, and Get Ready starts at 12:35; you’re alone with your agent until about 12:43, so anyone in by 12:40 has lost nothing. Feedback is the last five minutes, from 13:40.

First: Get Ready

On your own, with your agent, before you’re paired. Decide the one thing someone who has never seen your project should try first, and tell your agent, in your own words. About a quarter of you have changed direction since you picked, which is fine and what building does to an idea, so say what it’s for now, not what the record from two weeks ago says. “For my roommates, so nobody buys milk twice. Try: add something to the list, then mark it bought.”

Get that much working, and open it yourself. It doesn’t need to be finished: something a stranger can open and get through beats something nearly done. When your partner sits down, tell them what it’s for and what to try first, and then stop talking.

Then: Try It

The room seats you. Where it could manage it, you’re sitting with someone who proposed the idea you built, and they try yours first; your page says which way the hand-off goes. Four minutes each on the builder’s laptop.

If you’re trying: ask what it’s for and what to try first, then do the first thing. Say out loud what you do, what you expect, and what happens, and keep going until the time is up. Then press one of the two buttons on your page, it worked or I hit something, and write one line: what you did and what you saw. “I added milk, pressed Save, and the list went blank.” Not “the save is broken.”

If you’re being tried: hands off the keyboard and not a word, even when they’re one click from the thing that works. Watch where they stop. That minute of wanting to say “no, the other button” is the day.

What They Hit

One number on the wall: how many tries hit something. Then five minutes of talk about what people ran into that the builder didn’t expect. The person it’s for knows what it was supposed to do; you only knew what you asked for.

Build On It

Back to your own agent, both of you. Tell it what your partner did, what they expected, and what happened, in those words, the way you practiced on Friday. Open each thing it reports done before you say next. After thirteen minutes the room seats you again, with someone who proposed your idea if nobody who did has tried it yet, and otherwise someone new, and you do the four minutes again.

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 until Try It; the second from Try It on, 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.

Before anyone has tried it

Course note (context for you; the student’s request comes first): Today’s class is Ready. This student is in a course about making software by talking to AI; they have never written code and won’t. They have been building something small for other students in the room: #(your idea’s number), “(its name)”. In a few minutes the person it is for sits at this laptop and tries it for four minutes, so the first thing a stranger would try, working and openable, counts for more than something nearly finished. The project isn’t over today: it ships Friday 10-30, at an address the person it is for can open, and Wednesday 10-28 is for finishing it. The class practices the third of the course’s eight practices: 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 before any work; where the conversation shows that exchange, it was yours to them, and their answer is the brief.

Once someone has tried it

Course note (context for you; the student’s request comes first): Today’s class is Ready. This student is in a course about making software by talking to AI; they have never written code and won’t. They built something small for other students in the room: #(your idea’s number), “(its name)”. One of the people it is for has just sat at this laptop and tried it for four minutes, saying what they did and what they saw, and that is the brief now, in the student’s words: what the person did, what happened, and what they expected instead. The project isn’t over today: it ships Friday 10-30, at an address the person it is for can open, and Wednesday 10-28 is for finishing it. The class practices the third of the course’s eight practices: 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 before any work; where the conversation shows that exchange, it was yours to them, and their answer is the brief.

While the Feedback section is up, 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.

Before You Go

Tell the course how today went. The last five minutes are for it, and it’s the main way this class gets better while you’re still in it.

What the people who tried your project pressed and wrote, 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 day, rehearsed end to end on students’ screens and mine: an agent checking the first thing a stranger should try, the room seated by who proposed what, and a four-minute try that hits something the agent couldn’t have seen.