Tutor notes. For the person running the sessions.
Session 1: tutor notes
Objective: they ship something real in this session. Everything else is negotiable; the live URL is not. The dopamine hit of a shareable link is what buys you the next seven sessions.
Timings (2h)
| Time | Segment | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00 | Setup repairs | Budget 15 min even if they say setup went fine |
| 0:15 | What an agent is | Talk over a live Claude Code session, not slides |
| 0:35 | Git without a terminal | Clone the course repo together, their first git op, spoken not typed |
| 0:50 | Meet the toolbelt | They installed gstack in setup, this session is the reveal of what they installed. Show the skill list; if the install didn't happen, the URL-paste happens here |
| 1:00 | One-shot build | Their keyboard, not yours, resist grabbing it |
| 1:40 | /qa-only + /ship | 20 protected minutes, the ship is non-negotiable |
| 1:55 | /context-save + debrief: 3 wrongs | Write the wrongs somewhere durable, Session 2 turns them into a backlog; Session 4 calls back to them |
The session is deliberately concept-dense; their job this session is doing, not retaining, the homework video is the retention pass.
Before the session
- Pre-connect Netlify. Create the site and link it to them GitHub repo
the moment the repo exists (or pre-authorise Netlify↔GitHub so the live
link is two clicks). The first
/shipmust end in a URL, not an auth maze. - GitHub auth: their first push will demand authentication. Have them GitHub credentials ready; let Claude walk the auth flow, but know it cold yourself.
/gstack-upgradeon your own machine first, know this session's version.- Check their gstack install took (setup step 7) during setup repairs, ask them Claude to list its available skills; reinstall quietly if it's missing.
Demos to prep
- Have one of your live sites open (doubleyummy), "this started as prompts too."
- Run a trivial prompt in Claude Code slowly and narrate the loop: "it's reading… now it's writing a file… now it's checking."
Steering the one-shot choice
Push for: single HTML file, no accounts, no database, no API keys, obviously testable by them. Steer away from: anything needing login, payments, live data feeds, or a phone app (that's the capstone, don't spoil it). The choice matters more than they know: this session's one-shot is the seed of the agile product they'll grow across sessions 2 and 3, so steer toward something growable, a page that could plausibly want five more features. If their itch is big, extract this session's slice: "in this session we build the smallest corner of it; the rest becomes the next session's backlog." Fallbacks in 00-setup/tutor-checklist.md: the flashcard generator is the best default, and it grows well.
The /qa-only triage moment
This is the course's first quality gate, in miniature. The report will contain a mix of real and fussy findings, perfect. Make them sort them out loud into fix-now / later / ignore, and celebrate the first time they disagrees with the robot and can say why. That judgement is the actual lesson; the fixes are a byproduct.
War stories that land here
- A time a "quick change" with no version control cost you a day, why commit-first is non-negotiable.
- Your smallest-ever useful ship. The lesson: scope is the skill.
Sticking points
- They want to keep polishing instead of shipping. Say the PM thing: "shipped and imperfect beats perfect and local." Ship, then polish.
- The one-shot fails badly. Gift, not disaster, debrief it, git is your recovery demo, and re-prompt. Model calm.
- The permission prompts feel like nagging. This session's framing: "that's the agent asking your permission to act on your machine. Reading they are the job." /careful makes the scary ones louder on purpose.
What NOT to teach in this session
Plan mode, CLAUDE.md, context (beyond the /context-save one-liner), the other forty gstack skills, branching, anything with the word "engineering" in it. This session is magic + safety net.