Build Your First App With AI

The gap between "AI wrote me some code" and "there is a thing on the internet that I made" is where most people stall. This session closes it. We build one small, genuinely useful app together and put it online with a real URL before the end of class.

The app we build: a Show Your Work page — a personal site that pulls from something you already generate (your GitHub activity, a folder of images, a notes directory) and turns it into a living page of what you are making. It is small enough to finish, real enough to keep, and it is yours the moment class ends.

Who this is for
People who can describe what they want but have never shipped it. Some prior exposure to AI chat tools helps. No prior deployment experience assumed — the part where it goes live is the part we do most carefully.

How the 90 minutes go
- Spec first (15 min). How to describe an app to an agent so it builds the right thing. This is the skill that matters most and the one most people skip.
- First working version (30 min). Get something running locally, fast and ugly. We talk about why ugly-and-running beats elegant-and-theoretical.
- Make it yours (25 min). Swap in your own data source, change the look, add the one feature you actually care about.
- Ship it (20 min). A real deploy to a real URL. What "deployed" actually means, what it costs (nothing, here), and how to update it later.

Then 30 minutes of Q&A where we fix whatever broke — because something always breaks, and watching it get fixed is most of the education.

What you'll leave with
A deployed app at a URL you can share, the repository behind it, and a repeatable process you can point at your next idea. Plus the recording.

What you need before class
A machine you can install software on, a GitHub account (free), and the setup from AI OS — or any working coding agent. If you have not taken AI OS, arrive 15 minutes early and we will get you running.