It has been 10 days since I joined Clief Notes community and started Jake's coursework. It has been a massive step change in how I understand - and now use AI more effectively. A few days ago I joined into a paid subscription and the resources have proved to be very helpful in setting up my own folder structure. Before joining this community my use of AI was prompting the web user interface and copying the artefacts / outputs for my work. I had projects setup with various context files and instructions. I recently created my first website (in-progress) using Claude Code in VS Code and Jake's 'workflow-starter-code-project.md' template to create the folder structure. Most of the time has been spent in learning ICM, configuring the folder and file structure to route AI, and planning the geological database schema. Building the website was the easy bit! What has changed / unlocked in my use of AI: - spending more time planning and less time managing prompts and outputs - output has significantly increased with less prompts required to get the same job done I feel more "human" now and less like a "machine" in my use with AI since moving to the ICM method. The time being creative and planning is often away from the computer, where I'm spending time with family or doing the things I enjoy outdoors. I appreciate how Claude just "gets me" now without typing out an essay or giving me vague responses or hallucinations. If you are new here my advice is: - take your time to work through the foundation content - no rush, it takes time to learn and understand how to implement this knowledge into your work - start small and build for something specific - don't spend time creating a folder structure on what you think you will use - build for what you will use today, in 30 minutes. - play around and fail fast it won't be perfect to start with and that is OK :) Thank you to Jake - and everyone who has contributed to this community and built the resources that exist.

Quick update on the competition schedule so everyone knows what to expect. 📅 NEW CADENCE: TWICE A MONTH We're dropping comps on the 15th and the 30th of every month. Two chances to compete, every month, on a set schedule you can plan around. ✍️ WHY THIS SCHEDULE Spacing them out this way means we can give tailored feedback on every single submission. Not just the winners. Everyone who enters gets notes on what worked, where it's weak, and what to do next. 🎁 WHAT WINNERS GET Along with the prize, every winner gets a 15-minute one-on-one with Jake. Use it to talk through your build, ask questions, or bring whatever else is on your mind. Two comps a month. Feedback on every entry. Direct time with Jake for the winners. Mark your calendar for the 15th and let's get to work!

The full animation workflow: Script → Spec → Build → Render. Where'd you land after watching?

🎟️ 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. 💪

My friend B, in Thailand, posted his setup this morning and I had to smile, because I recognized every inch of it. Quick backstory: he's the builder/coder, I'm the courses-and-websites guy; we've known each other years. He'd built a little agent to help him read The Little Prince in Thai, I commented, and sent him the Quiet AI site. He went and actually read the gits — came back impressed. We got into it and I shared the principles I build by for this stuff — Jake Van Clief's ICM paper, basically, which I've been living inside for a while. His post: eight agents on his home machine, all on one Claude Code subscription. Diane (PM), Mort (accountant), Pam (admin), Chad (coach), Ingrid (PA), Zoey (content), Kru Nok (Thai teacher) — and Preston, the Chief of Staff, running the lot, able to spin up or rewrite any of them. Each with its own skills, MCPs, and a long-term Obsidian memory. He built them as side agents in Claude Code (the screenshot was great). The bit I loved: he writes about "Context Fetching" — the grind of digging up which files, which steps, in which order, before any real task even starts. His monthly finance close used to eat hours; now Mort runs it in ~30 min because the steps live in Mort, not his head ("the tireless robotic chairman," he called him). And when he wanted a dev on the team, he didn't crack open the source folder to hand-build an agent. He asked Preston to hire one — folder, skills, MCPs, prior-project context, all stood up by the Chief of Staff. The new dev, in his words: "anonymous, not yet born, but with a bright future on the team." I recognized all of it because it's the architecture I run. Cast of roles, one conductor, shared memory, and the hire-don't-build instinct. He came at it from the front end; I came up from the repo. Two roads, same shape — genuinely one of the more exciting things I've seen this year. The field's waking up and people are landing on real structure by feel. Here's what I keep turning over, though, and it's a question about my own build as much as his.