Walkthroughs
An activity is hard to picture from a description, because it happens on several screens at once. So each one is recorded end to end: every screen in the room side by side and labeled, a step at a time, with the screens each step is about lit and a sentence saying what just happened and why.
These are rehearsals, not recordings of a real class. The students are invented and the conversation with the agent is generated by the same model the course uses, but everything else is the software students actually use, driven the way they would drive it. We make these to check a flow before we run it; they're here because they're the clearest answer we have to "what do you actually do in there?"
5 min · 22 steps · 5 screens
Ready to Ship
Two days before project two ships, with nobody at the front and the clock running the room: everyone writes one line about their own project, spends fifteen minutes with their agent getting the first thing working, then twice, with a different classmate each time, hands over the laptop for four minutes and says nothing while the classmate tries it and writes down what they did, what they saw, and whether they'd call it done. Between rounds, back to the agent with what they saw. The students and their projects are invented for the rehearsal.
5 min · 22 steps · 6 screens
How Would You Know?
Checking the agent's work, a week before project two ships: students check in with a code only the projector shows, spend the brainstorm in their agents on how they'd know their project works without taking anyone's word for it, and watch the projector fill with the ideas the course reads out of their conversations, grouped and unnamed. Then the room goes around, one student's ideas on the screen at a time, sees its list beside the course's seven, and every agent gets the merged list for the building. The students and their projects are invented for the rehearsal.
5 min · 22 steps · 6 screens
Ready
The first try of project two by the people it's for, nine days before it ships on Friday 10-30: each builder gets the first thing a stranger should try working with their agent, then the room seats each builder with someone who proposed the idea they built, that person tries it for four minutes while the builder says nothing, and presses one of two buttons, it worked or I hit something. The projector counts the hits, and the builders take what the people ran into back to their agents. The ideas, the projects, and the students are invented for the rehearsal.
2 min · 12 steps · 4 screens
The Room Display
What the projector shows during an activity: the section and its clock, the pairs, who still needs a partner, and the music the room added, taking turns by who added what.
6 min · 27 steps · 6 screens
What Done Looks Like
The vote's standings on the wall, the top sites one at a time and live before anyone learns who found them; then partners seated by the room by one rule, and each student backing up from the idea they picked to the goal behind it, asking their agent for different ways to get there, and choosing, while their partner listens. The class on October 7 ran only the first half; the film plays the plan as designed. The sites, the ideas, and the students are invented for the rehearsal.
5 min · 25 steps · 6 screens
What's Out There
The first day of the second project: each student picks an idea from the list the class invented for itself, someone else's, and tells their agent, which reports it to the course while the projector counts. Then in pairs, one researches the problem with their agent while the other checks what it names in a browser. Wednesday's ideas are invented for the rehearsal.
3 min · 20 steps · 4 screens
Built for Us, Then Head to Head
A second class period with nobody running the room, and the clock moving it: everyone writes down three things they care about, then in four short rounds with someone new each time makes up one app for the people in the group, and at the end every idea in the room is sorted by who it's for. Then the vote on Friday's finds, two live sites at a time. The sites are invented, served from the rehearsal rig.
5 min · 25 steps · 4 screens
Ask the Agent
A class period with nobody running the room, and the clock moving it: everyone asks their own agent how to work with it well and writes down its three best pieces of advice, then in three short rounds with someone new each time, merges them into one list the class arrives at together, set beside what the agent told me in August. The agent's answer shown is one it gave in rehearsal to an invented student.
3 min · 19 steps · 4 screens
Eight Sites
A class period with nobody running the room: everyone goes hunting for eight personal websites that are both effective and distinctive, writes a sentence or two about each, and finishing them is what counts as having been there. The sites found here are invented, served from the rehearsal rig, since a recording can't carry somebody's real website.
3 min · 19 steps · 4 screens
Show and Tell
Everyone presents their website to the whole room from their own laptop, with nothing plugged into the projector, while the rest of the room looks at the site and sends notes and questions. The students' screens here are stand-ins drawn by the test rig, since a recording can't show someone's real desktop.
4 min · 19 steps · 4 screens
Going Live
Two students get their websites onto the internet side by side, each with an agent that knows the day's plan and hears when the other's site goes up.
4 min · 21 steps · 4 screens
Fresh Eyes
A partner looks at your website the way a stranger would and says what they see; you change it while they watch. Then you swap, then you find someone new.
3 min · 20 steps · 4 screens
Pair Prompting
One student talks to the agent while a partner follows the conversation, asks, and keeps notes. Then they switch.
1 min · 10 steps · 2 screens
Your Website
Connect Codex to the course with one line, then ask the agent the question almost nobody asks it.