It's easy to become overwhelmed by all of the information in the videos and in the community. Every day, I read words and acronyms that I do not understand and watch people build apps that are just crazy brilliant. One of the things that I started doing early on is taking something I didn't understand and feeding it to ChatGPT to explain. Drop in a video and ask, "Tell me the basics." or "Explain this as if I were in 9th grade." Take a discussion here in the community and copy/paste then ask questions. You can do that with someone's app/repo, too. Ask, "What does this do?" or "What problem does this solve?" The responses become another classroom. Ask until your brain is full. Ask until you are weary - because the next day those questions and answers become a foundation. Soon, you'll find yourself asking deeper questions, like: "What are the most important files in this repo and what do they do?" "How does the structure support the desired results?" "How does data move through this system?" and then that becomes ... "What parts of this repo fit my project?" "How could I adapt this repo to do X?" Don’t let the acronyms, tools, and tech language intimidate you. Everyone starts at the beginning. When you see people with 20 years of IT experience or someone launching a product that earns money right away, that’s okay. Celebrate it. Learn from them. But don’t let their progress distract you from your own opportunity to build, create, and make your mark in the AI world. You belong here, too. Every day brings something new to learn and a new idea to explore. I keep finding myself amazed by what is possible. The more I learn, the wider my vision gets. Only now, I’m not just watching anymore — I’m building, creating and imagining what I can do next. You will get there too.

I did not come from a technical background. I did not go to college. I have always had a knack for technology, and always been a voracious learner. I was recently let go as the director of finance for a construction company that I had been with for 19 months. I started as an unqualified project manager and asked to be the CFO because of my banking background after being with the company for 6 weeks. I said I wasn't comfortable with the title because of how unqualified I knew I was. We settled on the title of director, but I essentially was asked to operate as the CFO. I leaned heavily on ChatGPT to fill in the educational gaps. I didn't just want the answers, I wanted to understand the questions, the answers, and how the two correlate. I never wanted to lose those lessons, and I didn't want ChatGPT to start from scratch when I had to begin a new session, so I copied all of my logs into word documents. No one told me there was a better way, and it was better than having to start with a blank slate each session. In February I decided to try Claude and I felt like an entirely new world was opening up for me. The first day of chatting it created a deal assesment dashboard. Immediately I began to imagine all of the possibilities for improving our company. I tried providing the context to Claude that I had acquired from working with ChatGPT, but after I uploaded my word docs I was already at 80% on my context capacity. That was when I asked it to help me trim it down so we had more room to work. That was when I was first introduced to an MD. I didn't quite understand the full power of that file type, but I began to take the same approach with the MD's that I had with my word docs. I crammed everything I could into one MD. It was about two weeks later that my boss talked to me about Jake. He sent me the video and said that the method I had stumbled across was actually the best way to work with AI. I immediately began to rework the mess my MD was and setup a proper ICM system. I used it to create an accounts payable agent that saved me and my team the headache of entering in 150 new bills over the next three weeks.

1. Watch the intro video and introduce yourself in the intro post here 2. Start with The Foundation (free course). Concepts, folder architecture, prompting framework. Everything else builds on this. 3. Check in at the bottom of each lesson. Polls, discussion posts, other members working through the same stuff. Use them. 4. When you're ready to build real things, move to Implementation Playbooks (Level 2). When you're ready to build your own tools, Building Your Stack (Level 3). 5. Post your work. Ask questions. Help others when you can. What are you here to build?

(and a small change to how we run these) Hello everyone!! 👋 First, the honest bit. This one is landing later than Monday, and on purpose. Two things got us here. One, a lot more of you are submitting now. If I am going to really sit with every entry and give it a proper look, a weekend is not enough. This round I went through all of them, watched the videos, opened the repos, the full pass. That takes time and I would rather do it right than rush it. Two, I could feel a few of you running hot. Weekly is a sprint, and burnout was starting to creep in for some. So we are moving to bi-weekly. More room to build, more room to breathe, and the time for me to actually review the work the way it deserves. 🎥 Quick word on the videos. They were a step up this round. Some of the animated walkthroughs and live demos were a genuine pleasure to watch, and yes, I weigh them. A clean demo that shows the thing actually working makes a real difference. However I don't want that to ALWAYS be a requirement. Also you will notice the Heavy hitters that you usually see up here are not currently, some posted late and I decided to let the new entries and first timers also have a chance as well! But certainly, check the original post as every submission has something for you to learn from : 💰 Competition 7 ➖➖➖ 🛠️ A FEW THAT STOOD OUT (in no order, and if you didn't make it, it doesn't mean yours wasn't great) The Pipeline Operator — @Jayden Forshee Runs a whole sales pipeline. Paste a lead and it grades it, writes the outreach, and moves the card itself. The live board where you watch cards move on their own, sat right next to a normal chatbot, was one of the clearest ways anyone has shown what an operator actually is. https://github.com/griffainai/studio-pipeline-operator Board: https://pipeline-operator.vercel.app/board

I wanted to mark this one out loud. @Bas Rosario is the first member who isn't an admin to reach Level 7 in here. He earned every bit of it. If you've spent any time in the forums, you've run into Bas. He's the one greeting new people on the welcome board before anyone else gets there. He's the one leaving real feedback on your work, not a thumbs-up and a move on. And he teaches by meeting you exactly where you are. He's teaching his wife, a cosmetologist with no tech background, to think in systems. He explained ICM to her with a birthday cake. A cake is a system, he said. It has steps. You gather the ingredients, you preheat the oven, and you do them in order. That's what ICM does with the AI. It hands it one step at a time. That's the gift. He can take the thing some of us are still wrestling with and make it small enough to hold. And when you try to hand him the credit, he won't take it. On Saturday's call, the room joked that he's the new authority around here. He shot it down on the spot and pointed at the people he learned it from, naming them one by one. He builds things to route you to the right help, not to put himself at the center of it. He does this constantly. Not in bursts when he wants attention. Every day, in the background, for people who didn't ask and couldn't repay him. That's the whole thing. Level 7 isn't a reward for showing up. It's what showing up for other people looks like after you've done it for this long. And no, he's not a bot. I know the running joke. The steadiness almost makes the case for it, in a room full of people building AI. But that's the tell. Bas has said he shows up here every day on purpose, out of genuine gratitude for what this place has given him. A bot can post every day. It can't be grateful. Bas comes back because he is. That's the most human thing in here. Bas, thank you. This community is better because you're in it. If Bas reviewed your work or helped you when you were stuck, say so below. He should hear it.