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.
What You're Looking At
This is a rehearsal, not a class. The students are invented: they're the personas we use to test this course on itself. Wherever an agent or a companion speaks, its words were generated by gpt-5.6-luna, the model the course ran on until September 24, 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.
Three kinds of substitution are made for publication, and only these three. 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. A setup token is shortened, because a token should never be shown whole even when it's a throwaway from a test database. And where a film needs a website that isn't anybody's, a student's own site or one a student went and found, it is an invented page served by the rig, shown under an address ending in .example. Nothing else on any screen is altered.
The brief the students actually read is the activity page.
Step by Step
Wednesday, 12:30, and I'm away again. The box at the top of the activity page runs the day, the same on every laptop: what's on, how long is left, and where to go.
Three minutes on your own first. Three things you care about or do a lot, one to a box. The more particular the better: the 22 bus, not transportation.
Everyone else is doing the same, and I can see it as it's written. That's all I can do today: look.
12:33, and every page changes by itself. Round One: find someone near you. One of you types the other's code.
Beside the idea is what you each care about. Read each other's three out loud and look for something you share. Maya cooks for her roommates, and Priya's apartment runs on its group chat.
Then make up one app the two of you would actually use: what it's called, what it does, and who it's for. Priya has the pen; Maya watches it arrive.
All three filled in is when it counts: this round counts for both of them, and the page keeps count of the classmates Maya has met. Three is what being here means today.
12:42, Round Two, someone new. Maya types Jordan's code. They share one thing straight away: they both ride the 22.
Under what they care about is what each of them has made already: Sunday Table and Draft Night. The point of showing it is to make something new this time.
Maya typed the code, so Maya has the pen. A bus app for two people who miss the same bus.
Two more rounds just like that. By Round Three everyone on screen has met three classmates, and that part of the day is done for them.
Round Four is for more ideas, not for attendance. I see every group's, from wherever I am.
13:09, and the rounds are over. The page sorts every idea in the room by who it's for, never by what kind of app it is, with who came up with each one.
And under the themes, every idea by round, in case the grouping missed something. Your next project is building for someone else in this class. This is where it starts.
The box has moved on to Head to Head: the vote on Friday's finds.
Two classmates' finds, side by side, live. Never your own, never the same pair twice, and never whose they were: just what the finder wrote about each.
Two questions: which is more effective, and which is more distinctive. They don't have to be the same site. A line on why, if you like, and Next.
Thirty-five pairs is today's ask. The count at the top keeps track, and anyone who runs out of class has until next Wednesday.
And this is my board: every comparison as it comes in, and both rankings so far. Nobody else sees them until I show the class on October 7.
That's Wednesday. Keep your idea in mind, and look at some websites: both are where the next project starts.
Recorded September 24, 2026.