Uncommon Waters
Academy

101 Build: from never used AI to a live product someone else can use.

Six weeks. Starts November 9, 2026. Virtual. One 90-minute session Monday, two 30-minute office hours, 8–15 hours a week. No coding background required.

What you can do at the end

In six weeks a non-technical person ships a working web product with login, a database, and live integrations, built with AI, deployed, and used by a real person. They return able to build prototypes, design AI workflows, and stand up simple agents inside your organization.

Your six milestones · click a week

Week 1 · Nov 9 – Nov 13

Cursor and the IDE

working locally with AI

Student works in Cursor on their own laptop: knows the layout, has caught the AI fluent and wrong, has an AGENTS.md the agent obeys, one custom command and one skill, and a one-page product running on localhost.

Monday, 90 minutes

  1. 5′Open: six weeks, and this week nothing leaves your laptop.
  2. 22′Install Cursor together, privacy mode on (on camera), open the course folder. Tour: files, editor, chat (Ask vs Agent), @filename mentions, accept/reject a change, undo with a checkpoint, the browser preview.
  3. 15′First conversation with AI, Ask mode, about something you know cold. Catch it fluent and wrong; one line in the shared doc.
  4. 8′What you just saw: predicts the next word, wants to finish, model vs product. The chat is a guess; the page is the truth.
  5. 20′AGENTS.md: rules the agent reads every time, because rules typed in chat fade. Write six lines (including 'ask me 3 clarifying questions before you build'). Then ask the agent for a one-page product site using @PRODUCT.md and open it on localhost. Test one rule: ask for a key; it should refuse.
  6. 15′Commands and skills: a command is a saved prompt you run by name (/done-check); a skill is a folder of know-how the agent pulls in when it is relevant. Build /done-check together; demo one skill.
  7. 5′Habits for a local week: end every session with the page open in the browser; keys never in chat; transcripts are kept. Buddy pairs posted.
Open week 1 →

Habit 1

Every session ends with a push. The repo is the record.

watched by pushes_per_session

Habit 2

Keys never go in chat, never in the repo. Env only.

watched by secrets_hits

Habit 3

Every chat transcript is kept, automatically: the shuttle pushes it to transcripts/ in your repo. 201 audits it.

watched by transcript_silence_days