🎟️ PRIZE: FREE SEAT IN THE LYCEUM 🎟️ Pick your cohort. Technical, Business, or Creator. Your call. ---- 📋 THE CHALLENGE You are the client this week. No fictional Marcus. No fictional Sarah. No fictional Devon. Pick a real problem in your own life or work. Build the folder-based specialist you wish you had. This is the capstone of Month 2. The challenge flips. Instead of building for someone else, you write your own brief and solve it for yourself. ---- 🎯 THE TWIST The hard part isn't building. The hard part is scoping. Picking the right problem is harder than solving the wrong one. Most people pick problems that are too small or too vague. The skill this week is treating yourself like a real client. Be specific about what's broken. Be specific about what you need. Don't pick "I want to be more productive." Pick "I waste two hours every Sunday night writing the same kind of LinkedIn carousel posts and I need a folder that handles 80% of the draft work so I can focus on the hook and the visuals." That's a real brief. Specific problem. Specific scope. Specific desired output. ---- 🗂️ TWO DELIVERABLES THIS WEEK This is the only week with two pieces: 1️⃣ Your own client brief. 250 words or less. Describe the problem you're solving for yourself. Treat yourself like a real client. What's broken? What have you already tried? What do you need? 2️⃣ The folder system that solves it. Same structure as every week: - 📄 identity.md - 📐 rules.md - 💬 examples.md - 📚 reference/ - 📖 README.md Your brief lives at the top of the repo as brief.md so judges can read it before they look at the folder. ---- 🔥 THE ANGLE THIS WEEK Anyone can follow a brief. Writing your own, then solving it, then shipping it as a usable folder is a portfolio piece that demonstrates judgment, not just execution. This is the skill that separates "AI hobbyist" from "AI builder." Anyone can prompt their way through a problem someone else handed them. Scoping a problem, designing the solution, and shipping it as a system is what real work looks like. 💪

🎯 WE READ ALL OF YOUR RESPONSES. HERE'S WHAT'S NEXT (AND A BIG ASK) A couple weeks ago we asked you what you wanted Clief Notes to become. You showed up. You wrote real, thoughtful answers, some of you wrote essays. We read every single one. Twice. So before anything else: thank you. This post is us answering you. 💬 YOU TOLD US. HERE'S WHAT WE'RE BUILDING. You said you want a clearer path from learning ICM to actually getting paid for it. → It's coming. A real learning-to-earning track, plus a talent platform we're building to connect you with people who want to hire what you can do. Heads up: the talent platform will be Premium and VIP only, one more reason to lock in below. You said competitions without feedback don't help you grow. → Fixed. Going forward, every single entrant gets tailored feedback on their build, not just the winner. We're moving to two competitions a month so we can do it right. And both monthly winners get a 30-minute call with me. You said the best builds get buried in the feed. → We're building a tagged library so you can actually find "ICM setups for solo operators" or "small team, non-coder" instead of scrolling for an hour. You said you couldn't map all the pieces, Skool, Discord, the Lyceum, ICM, what each tier unlocks. → A single orientation page is on the way. One place that breaks all of it down so nobody's lost. You said you want to connect with each other. → We hear you. Meetups, pairing, and a recorded "After Tea" hangout are on the table. South Florida alone has over 1,000 of you. Let's use that. You said we've felt spread thin. → The most honest one. You're right. We're bringing on real help to run the day-to-day so the community gets consistency, and so Matt and I can keep building the things above instead of dropping balls. You called it, and we're fixing it. 📍 QUICK NOTE ON ICM: a few of you asked for "ICM with Copilot" or "ICM with n8n, Sheets, GoHighLevel." Good news, ICM already works with any model and feeds straight into the tools you're using. It's the structure underneath all of them, not a separate thing you have to relearn per tool. If that's not landing for you, that's on us to make clearer, and we will.

A handful of folks from here have started connecting and sharing each other’s content on LinkedIn. Thought it would be nice to have a group over there where we can all contribute to and share our content to a wider audience through our connections. Hopefully continue to drive more folks to the conversations here as well. Please join if you’d like to connect! There’s already 20 of us in there after one day! Go boost your network. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/31160010

🎟️ PRIZE: FREE SEAT IN THE LYCEUM 🎟️ Pick your cohort. Technical, Business, or Creator. Your call. ---- 🇺🇸 Quick note first. This post is going up Today because we took Memorial Day off yesterday. To keep things fair, you've got until Sunday May 31st at 12:00 PM EST to submit. Same week of build time, just shifted. ---- 📋 THE CHALLENGE Build a folder-based AI researcher for a specific topic or industry. You pick the domain. This week's deliverable is one researcher folder that someone could drop into a Claude project and use as their personal research partner for whatever domain you've built it for. ---- 🎯 PICK YOUR DOMAIN The domain is yours. Pick something specific. Pick something you'd actually use. A few sparks to get you thinking: - 🏦 M&A activity in one industry (fintech, healthcare, defense) - ⚖️ Court cases in one area of law (employment, IP, immigration) - 🧬 Scientific research on one health condition or treatment - 🏘️ Real estate market dynamics in one city or asset class - 🥊 Competitive intelligence for one product category - 📜 Historical research on one period, place, or movement - 📚 Academic literature in one specific subfield - 📋 Regulatory developments in one sector - 📰 Journalism research on one beat (climate tech, AI policy, biotech funding) The more specific, the better. "Research assistant" is too broad. "M&A research analyst for early-stage fintech deals in the US and Europe" is right. ---- 🗂️ THE METHODOLOGY If this is your first comp, welcome. Here's what you need to know: This week (and every week) you're learning interpretable context methodology. Folders as architecture. Each file does one job well. Your researcher is a folder with five things: - 📄 identity.md (who the researcher is, what domain they cover) - 📐 rules.md (how they research) - 💬 examples.md (what good looks like) - 📚 reference/ (frameworks, source lists, key concepts) - 📖 README.md (how to use it)

💰 $500 CASH 💰 Win this and you've covered a year of Premium with $175 left over. 📋 THE CHALLENGE Build a folder-based AI coach for a specific domain. You pick the domain. This week's deliverable is one coach folder that someone could drop into a Claude project and use as their personal coach for whatever you've built it for. 🎯 PICK YOUR DOMAIN The domain is yours. Pick something specific. Pick something you'd actually use. A few sparks to get you thinking: - 🎤 Public speaking coach for new managers giving their first big presentations - 💼 Salary negotiation coach for tech workers at Series A startups - 📞 Cold call coach for first-year SDRs in B2B software - 🎯 Interview prep coach for product manager roles - ✍️ Writing coach for one specific genre (sci-fi short stories, college essays, op-eds) - 🏋️ Fitness form coach for one movement (squat, deadlift, golf swing) - 🌍 Language learning coach for one use case (medical Spanish, business Mandarin) - ♟️ Chess coach for one specific opening or endgame pattern - ⚽ Youth athletics coach for one sport and age group The more specific, the better. "Life coach" is too broad. "Salary negotiation coach for tech workers at Series A startups" is right. 🗂️ THE METHODOLOGY If this is your first comp, welcome. Here's what you need to know: This week (and every week) you're learning the foundation of interpretable context methodology. Folders as architecture. Each file does one job well. Your coach is a folder with five things: - 📄 identity.md (who the coach is) - 📐 rules.md (how they coach) - 💬 examples.md (what good looks like) - 📚 reference/ (frameworks, drills, source material) - 📖 README.md (how to use it) Drop the folder into a Claude project. Claude becomes the coach. Reusable. Shareable. Portable. 🔥 THE ANGLE THIS WEEK A coach is NOT a knowledge base. A coach gives feedback. Pushes back. Asks better questions. Holds people accountable.