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.
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. 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.
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
Friday, before class. Wednesday's list is on the activity page: every idea the room came up with for each other, numbered, in the themes the page sorted them into, with who made each one.
Jordan helped make two of them, Bus Buddy and Draft Night, and the list marks both “One of yours”. The idea he builds has to be someone else's: he's building for someone in this room.
I press Start. The room is on Pair Up, the projector says so, and a code appears on every student's pair page.
Priya types Jordan's code. His code was used, so later he researches first and she checks. For now they're both choosing.
Next, and the room is on Pick. Each of them picks one idea from the list, not their partner's and never their own, and tells their own agent the number.
Jordan starts with the one he cares about most: number 6, Draft Night, for his fantasy league. His agent fetches the pick link from its shell, and the course says no: that one is his. The agent tells him, and reads the list for the others.
He asks it to try anyway, to hear it from the course itself. Same answer, and this time the agent passes the course's sentence on word for word.
The request that reached the model ended with the day's note: what the class is for, the one rule, a link for the list and a link for the pick that only his agent has, and that Priya is beside him choosing her own. Every word of it is on the activity page.
So he's torn between two of the others: 3, Sunday Table, and 7, Pickup Call. He asks the agent what's hard about each, the way he'd ask a friend helping him choose.
He settles on 7. The agent fetches the pick link again with the number on the end, and the course's answer is the confirmation the agent relays: recorded, with the idea's name and who it's for.
The projector counts it within a few seconds, by number and name and never by who. Jordan's list marks it Yours.
Priya tells her own agent, off camera, and so does the rest of the room. The projector's list is what the room is investigating, most first; Pickup Call has two now.
Next, Research 1. Jordan researches his idea and Priya checks: her page has his conversation, the note buttons, and a companion for checkers. Today is the problem, not the solution.
Jordan asks about the problem out loud: who has it, what they do now, what already exists. His agent's note has changed with his pick: it knows his idea, and that it can't open the web from where it runs.
It names a dozen things from memory and says so: who has the problem, what they do now, what exists and what each doesn't do. It can't open the web, so checking them is Priya's half of the work.
He asks for a notes file in a new folder, in his words, so he leaves with something. What the agent does on his laptop is shown as a request and not run, because this pane stands in for his terminal; in class it runs.
Priya opens the first thing it named, the gym's own schedule, in her own browser. In the rehearsal nobody browses; in class, this is the part the agent can't do. She writes what she found as an I notice.
She isn't sure it's worth saying, so she asks the companion. It can see the same conversation she can and none of the web; it asks what she saw, and hands it back to her to say to Jordan out loud.
Then Jordan asks for what he really wants to see: a quick prototype. His agent holds to the day. It says a prototype would jump ahead of the research, and goes back to the notes; the note is context, not an order, so the choice is still his.
Nine minutes up. I press Loop and every pair switches at once: now Priya researches her own idea, Bus Buddy, and Jordan checks. His page gets her conversation and the checker's companion.
Priya's turn goes the same way, on her own laptop, off camera. Each turn is about one person's idea; nobody researches their partner's for them.
Then a new partner and a second round, the same again; the film skips them. Going Around: a minute each, around the room, on what you're building, who it's for, and one thing you found out.
The projector shows what the room picked while people talk: counts by idea, no names. Two people on Pickup Call is the start of a pairing for the build weeks.
Next is Feedback, the last section as always; the link is on their page. Then I press Stop, twice so it can't happen by accident.
Closed, and the notes come out. Jordan sees what Priya found about his idea, with her name on it, on his own page. His pick stays with the course, and he can change it any time.
Recorded October 19, 2026.