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.
What You're Looking At
This is a rehearsal, not a class. The two students are invented — they're the personas we use to test this course on itself — and their conversation with the agent was generated bygpt-5.6-luna, the same model the course runs on, recorded once and replayed since so the run comes out the same every time. Everything else is the software students use: the real pages, the real proxy, the real timer, the real companion. The one thing standing in for itself is the terminal, because students work in Codex and a browser can't record a terminal; that pane shows what genuinely passed through the course's proxy, and never invents output for a command that wasn't run.
Two kinds of substitution are made for publication, and only these two: where a screen would show the rehearsal rig's own 127.0.0.1 address or its scratch folder, it reads as the real one instead; and a setup token is shortened, because a token should never be shown whole even when it's a throwaway from a test database. Nothing else on any screen is altered.
The brief the students actually read is the activity page.
Step by Step
Same page as last week, a different plan. Geoff picks Fresh Eyes and presses Start; the room is on Get Paired and codes appear on every student's page.
The first section says the one thing to sort out before pairing: can you see a change on your own laptop within seconds? If not, ask your agent for a local preview now.
Priya types Jordan's code. Whoever's code was used builds first, so Jordan is building and Priya is critiquing: his site, on his laptop, her eyes.
Priya's page has the feed of Jordan's conversation, the note buttons with “the site” already chosen, and a companion for critics. Jordan's has no feed and no notes, but a companion of his own, closed until he wants it.
Geoff presses Next and the room is on Round 1. Eight minutes each way. Priya looks first, the way a stranger would, and says what she sees.
She tells him she couldn't work out what he studies until she'd scrolled twice. That's the kind of thing he can't see and she can.
Jordan tells the agent what Priya saw, not what he concluded from it. The change costs him a sentence, so it's worth trying even if he throws it away.
It reaches Priya's feed a few seconds behind, so she can see whether what he asked for is what she meant.
Priya has a reaction she doesn't trust as feedback. The companion can see the same feed she does; she asks it.
It doesn't grade the site or write the feedback for her. It asks what she was looking at, and hands her something to say to Jordan out loud.
She writes the one worth keeping as a note: “What if”, about the site. Jordan doesn't see it now; it's for after class.
While the agent works, Jordan has a moment. His companion keeps the list of what he was told, and asks what he's trying first. It won't build anything.
Geoff's room shows the pair, who's building, and the note as it's written: “1 hidden” means hidden from Jordan, not from him.
Eight minutes up. Geoff presses Loop: “Again — everyone switches.” Every pair in the room swaps at once, and both pages say so.
Now Priya is building and Jordan is critiquing. His page has the feed, the notes, and the critic's companion; hers has the builder's. Each is a fresh conversation, not the one from before.
Round over. Geoff presses Next into New Partner, and that ends every pair in the room: both pages go back to a code, the same code they had, and say who they've already worked with.
If Jordan types Priya's code again, the page asks him to be sure. “Find someone new” is a request, not a rule: a room with an odd number needs the way through.
He finds Sam instead, whose code has been waiting in the room's list. Sam's code was used, so Sam builds first and Jordan critiques a site he's never seen.
Three more rounds go the same way. The last section sends everyone to the feedback conversation; the button is on their page.
Then Geoff closes the session, two clicks so it can't happen by accident, and that's when the notes come out.
Jordan sees what Priya wrote about his site, with her name on it, after class and on his own page. Four partners, four sets of fresh eyes. Nothing is handed in.
Recorded September 9, 2026.