Warm-up · Three minutes, no stakes
Everything you have built in this program so far came back as a document or a workflow. This comes back as software. Before class, or in the first few minutes of it, paste this and watch what happens.
Build me a fully playable snake game in the browser. Make it look polished with a score counter and increasing speed.
- It comes back as something you click
- You never said how to build it
- It took about a minute
- Nothing here can break, and nobody is grading it
Do not edit the prompt and do not debug your snake. If it does not run, paste it again in a new chat and move on.
Pick your function
Step 1 · Bring one thing you do by hand
Pick something you did this week and will do again next week. Repetitive, manual, low stakes. The report you rebuild from scratch. The list you re-sort every Monday. The thing that lives in your head because nobody ever built a tool for it.
Small wins here. A tool that does one job and works on Monday beats a dashboard you abandon on Friday.
Right size
- One job. One screen.
- Takes something you paste in and hands something back.
- You could describe it to me in one sentence.
Too big for Thursday
- A dashboard with tabs.
- Anything that needs a login, a database, or live CRM data.
- Anything you would have to maintain.
If you cannot say what goes in and what comes out, that is the part to work on before class. Not the build.
Step 2 · Write the build prompt
Same GRACE you used last week. You are pointing it at a tool this time instead of a draft. The two nobody does are still the two that decide how this goes.
Build me a working tool I can use at Holistiplan. Goal: I want to stop [what you do by hand today] by hand. Role: You are a product engineer who builds small internal tools for go-to-market teams. You care about whether I can use this on Monday morning, not whether the code is elegant. Action: Build this as a single artifact I can open and use. It takes [what you hand it] and hands me back [what it hands back]. Keep it to one screen. No login, no database, no settings page. Context: I work in Sales at Holistiplan, tax planning software for financial advisors, now expanding into the CPA and tax professional market. Here is the real material this tool has to handle: [paste the export, the notes, the list]. Work only from what I give you. Never ask for or include client PII. Example of good: [paste one finished version you were proud of] Before you build anything, tell me in three lines what you are about to make. If my description is missing something you need, ask me one question at a time.
That last paragraph is the whole difference between a tool and twenty minutes of watching it build the wrong thing.
Step 3 · When it breaks
It will break. That is not a sign you did this wrong, it is Thursday working as intended. Do not start over and do not rewrite the prompt.
Here is what I expected: [what you wanted] Here is what I got: [what happened instead] Explain in plain English what went wrong before you change anything. Then change only that one thing. Do not touch anything that is already working.
One change at a time. Ask for three at once and it will quietly drop two.
Step 4 · Show each other
How sharing works in our environment
- Share, not publish. Hit Share on the artifact. Anyone at Holistiplan who signs in with their work account can open it. Public links are turned off for Team and Enterprise accounts, so your tool cannot wander onto the open internet by accident.
- Project access carries over. If you built it inside your Business Brain project, whoever opens it needs access to that project too. Most of you have it. If someone cannot open yours, that is usually why.
- Nobody can edit yours. They copy the code into a new chat and build their own version from there. Yours stays the way you left it.
- Bring the link to Zoom. Paste it in chat during the last fifteen minutes. We are going around the room.
If Build will not run for you at all on Thursday, that is a setting on our side and not something you did. Say so in chat and we will sort it in the first five minutes.
A starter tool for your function
If nothing comes to mind by Thursday, build this one. Paste it in and let it ask you the rest.
Build me a single screen tool where I paste a list of open deals with their last activity date and next step, and it sorts them into Move Today, Waiting On Them, and Cold. Show each deal with the one line I should send, and let me edit that line in place and copy it out. No login, no database.
Where this stops
Build internal tools, prototypes, and the low stakes things you repeat. Do not build a system of record, and do not build anything a client will touch. If a tool you make Thursday turns into something the team depends on, that is a good problem and a conversation with RevOps, not a bigger artifact.
No client data. Not a name, not an account number, not a return. The tool needs the shape of the work and nothing about the customer.
Office hours, Tuesdays 1:30 to 2:00 PM MT. Bring the build that went sideways. Those are the ones the room learns from.