Most "AI workflows" are one phase: type a prompt, hope. Mine has four. The build doesn't start until phase four. By then the AI is barely making decisions. It's executing a contract. Phase one: Brainstorm Open conversation. No structure, no acceptance criteria yet, no scope. I yap. Claude compresses what I yap into a `.md` file in real time. We argue. We rule things out. We name the actual outcome I'm chasing, not the thing I thought I wanted when I started talking. The output of phase one is one sentence: **what done looks like.** CRUSH started as "I want a video plugin that feels analogue." Two hours of brainstorm later the doc said: "14 Metal fragment shaders, a 6-slot effect chain, three global controls (DECIMATE, SPAZ, CHILL), real-time on Apple Silicon, drag-and-drop in DaVinci Resolve." That's the outcome that got dispatched. Phase two: Implementation plan Now I take the outcome and ask Claude to architect it. Files, dependencies, the order things get built in, the places it's likely to fall over. This is still in the main session. Still advisor seat. Zero code written. The plan for CRUSH was a 6-stage build pipeline. Format design, build-time generator, plugin core, 2D shaders, splat engine, AE port. Fourteen Metal fragment shaders authored as `.crush` JSON files. A Python codegen that writes the entire C++ OFX boilerplate at compile time so adding a new effect later is JSON plus a shader function and nothing else. Every stage had acceptance criteria, file scope, and risks named upfront. By the time it was done, the plan was a single markdown artefact a fresh worker could execute against without ever talking to me. That's the goal. The plan is the spec. The spec is the thing. The plan also names risks before any worker meets them. It says: "Metal kernel buffer names must match this exact contract or DaVinci silently rejects the bundle." It says: "Real-time on Apple Silicon at 4K is the gate. If a shader drops frames during scrub, it doesn't ship."

I was today years old when I realized I did not have some of the most important files that you need in the folder structure that Jake teaches. During today's video call with the VIP group, he went on a deep-dive rabbit trail about the ICM folder methodology that he teaches in his foundations course (free). As he was discussing it, I went to check what my root folder looked like and I did not have a Claude.md or context.md file!!! My productivity skyrocketed ever since I implemented his folder strategy over a month ago, but little did I know that I hadn't even implemented it correctly. 🤯 🤯 🤯 This goes to show that massive action beats over planning every time!

Tell us three things: 1. What you do (job, industry, student, career-changer, whatever) 2. What brought you to Clief Notes 3. One thing you're trying to figure out right now related to computing or AI I'll respond to every single one. And read each other's intros too because the person who's stuck on the same problem as you might already be in this thread. I'll go first I am Jake, I have been working in tech for 15 Years, building with Generative AI for 3 Years straight now! Excited to teach and learn! That's it. Simple, scannable, gives you data on who's joining and what they need, and keeps the feed clear for content that retains people past week one.