Building is easy, knowing how it is built is the game
I had a version of this website live for a few months now. It was built using Antigravity and had a few essays I had written (drafted by me and refined by AI), but I had no clue how the backend actually worked. So every time I had to change something I had to voice it to the AI and trust that it wouldn’t break anything else. That was frustrating.
So, this time around as my first project I knew I couldn’t ignore the ‘how’ of anything I do with AI.
However, in the past it took me weeks to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript and even longer to make anything remotely useful out of it. I knew, if I entered the zone of learning how to write each of the different languages, I would not get anywhere.
The strategy had to be more centered around understanding what was written and managing the workflows with sharp management skills. Execution with the right checks and balances makes me far more productive.
So, I spent the whole day prompting Claude to:
- Design a 10 day course to educate me on how to spot the right code and the common mistakes, and to test my understanding of it.
- Design Claude.md principles to make sure Claude always wore the mentor hat as it was working with me.
Already learning a lot, and Claude even put deliberate bugs in to test my understanding. It felt like a real tutor and was actually fun to learn from.
I will continue to hone this muscle: be good at reviewing what has been built.