I just realized something today, Jake's first classroom lesson isn't about Claude Code. It's a history lesson. Titled "A 2,000-Year Overnight Success." The argument: AI is not 70 years old. https://www.skool.com/cliefnotes/classroom/d7ae60cf?md=147b0e486c964ba78a70cdc1d2d40c5d I don't need to rehash it here; if you skipped it, go back to read it. It was the first weekend of April, I had found Jake's videos the week before, then discovered Skool and dove into the classroom. I made a commitment to myself to read each page, not throw them into NotebookLM for the summary. To my disappointment, I see a super long history lesson. I sink into my chair. Eventually, I get to the end. AlphaGo. I had never heard of AlphaGo before; somehow, that story had slipped past me. I queued up YouTube on my TV and sat down for a Saturday evening documentary. Fascinating! AlphaZero started tabula rasa. Blank slate, no domain-specific human knowledge. Just the rules and play against yourself. In four hours, it rediscovered centuries of chess openings, endgames, and positional theory - then kept going past what humans ever found. Kasparov called it "like discovering the secret notebooks of some great player from the past." Those moves weren't invented. They were already in the game. The truth was latent in the mathematical structure of chess. AlphaZero excavated it. That's the archaeologist move - applied to a machine. It didn't study the tradition. It played to the pattern. Jake's throughline: "The mistake is thinking these layers replace each other. They don't. They stack." In the classroom, he could have started with how to prompt or an explanation of what a harness is. Instead, he started with the source of the whole thing. Because you can't build conviction on a trend. A pattern that's held for two thousand years isn't a trend. That's proof. I've worked with a family lumber business. 125 years old. Founded 1900, delivering coal by horse and buggy. Today, it's digital marketing, performance ads, algorithms, and closed-loop lead tracking. Every generation rebuilt what the company looked like. But the fourth-generation president still says what his father said: "Young man, we're not in the lumber business. We're in the shelter business." The tools stacked. The belief didn't.

(and a small change to how we run these) Hello everyone!! 👋 First, the honest bit. This one is landing later than Monday, and on purpose. Two things got us here. One, a lot more of you are submitting now. If I am going to really sit with every entry and give it a proper look, a weekend is not enough. This round I went through all of them, watched the videos, opened the repos, the full pass. That takes time and I would rather do it right than rush it. Two, I could feel a few of you running hot. Weekly is a sprint, and burnout was starting to creep in for some. So we are moving to bi-weekly. More room to build, more room to breathe, and the time for me to actually review the work the way it deserves. 🎥 Quick word on the videos. They were a step up this round. Some of the animated walkthroughs and live demos were a genuine pleasure to watch, and yes, I weigh them. A clean demo that shows the thing actually working makes a real difference. However I don't want that to ALWAYS be a requirement. Also you will notice the Heavy hitters that you usually see up here are not currently, some posted late and I decided to let the new entries and first timers also have a chance as well! But certainly, check the original post as every submission has something for you to learn from : 💰 Competition 7 ➖➖➖ 🛠️ A FEW THAT STOOD OUT (in no order, and if you didn't make it, it doesn't mean yours wasn't great) The Pipeline Operator — @Jayden Forshee Runs a whole sales pipeline. Paste a lead and it grades it, writes the outreach, and moves the card itself. The live board where you watch cards move on their own, sat right next to a normal chatbot, was one of the clearest ways anyone has shown what an operator actually is. https://github.com/griffainai/studio-pipeline-operator Board: https://pipeline-operator.vercel.app/board

🎟️ PRIZE: FREE SEAT IN THE LYCEUM 🎟️ Pick your cohort. Technical, Business, or Creator. Your call. ---- 🇬🇧 We're back. Good morning from London. 👋 Thanks for the patience last week. Jake and I needed a few days to breathe before London Tech Week kicked off, and you all responded with nothing but support. We don't take that for granted. Now let's get back to building. ---- 📋 THE CHALLENGE Build a folder-based AI operator that handles ONE operational workflow end-to-end. You pick the workflow. This week's deliverable is one operator folder that someone could drop into a Claude project and use to handle a real business workflow without babysitting. ---- 🎯 PICK YOUR WORKFLOW The workflow is yours. Pick something specific. Pick something you'd actually use. A few sparks to get you thinking: - 🎫 Customer support triage (which tier handles this ticket?) - ✅ Content review and approval - 📨 Lead intake and qualification - 💸 Refund request handler - 🤝 Partnership pitch evaluator - 🎙️ Podcast guest pitch sorter - 💼 Freelance project intake - 📄 Resume screen for one specific role - 📅 Meeting request triage (book, decline, delegate) The more specific, the better. "Customer support" is too broad. "Refund request triage for an ecommerce store doing under 200 orders per month" is right. 📎 If you want a fully written client brief as a reference, the attached PDF walks through one example. Don't build the example. Use it as a template for how to think about scoping your own operator. ---- 🗂️ THE METHODOLOGY If this is your first comp, welcome. Here's what you need to know: This week (and every week) you're learning interpretable context methodology. Folders as architecture. Each file does one job well. Your operator is a folder with five things: - 📄 identity.md (who the operator is and what workflow they own) - 📐 rules.md (the decision logic: criteria, edge cases, escalation rules) - 💬 examples.md (decisions in action, including at least one edge case) - 📚 reference/ (checklists, templates, rubrics) - 📖 README.md (how to use it)

What a trip round the sun it has been! Most communities are a feed. This one is a workshop. You can feel the difference the second you walk in. People show their work instead of performing it. They ask the real question instead of the safe one. That culture does not happen by accident. Someone has to set the tone and then protect it every single day. That someone is @Jake Van Clief . 36 thousand of us are here because he built a place worth showing up to. So from me, and from everyone who has ever posted a half-finished idea here and walked away with a better one: thank you, Jake. For the build, for the standard, and for the room. Happy birthday. Here is to the next year of work worth sharing. //A<3

My tips for getting the most out of engaging with the community and having a big impact. Want to earn the title of weekly leaderboard winner? The best method is through real engagement. There are a number of methods at this point to turn the numbers in your favor. I know there a lot of you out there who want to earn that spot so I'm giving away my tips to level the playing field. --- 1️⃣ High Value Posts This is the big one. Gathering likes is a numbers game. Your content has to be of value to the widest ranging audience as possible. Your post on your 10 tiered folder structure replacing your entire department may be impressive to the top of the top in the forum, but to those just getting started their eyes will gloss over. Most people who come in here are being brought in because they are trying to learn, focus there. Look at this post: https://www.skool.com/cliefnotes/poll-what-is-your-software-development-experience-level?p=3f51f433 This is a poll I created, something literally ever member here can answer and give their story to. This is not only a post relevant to everyone but it points out something important: the results from the poll. Most people here are beginners. Remember that if your goal is to engage as much of the community as possible. Some other high performing posts that have this focus: A megathread pointing everyone to all the weekly competitions in one area. Again, something everyone can use and reference. High enough value that Jake posted it to the Getting Started classroom page. https://www.skool.com/cliefnotes/weekly-competition-megathread?p=5b9e8773 A repo containing a tutor for software architecture fundamentals https://www.skool.com/cliefnotes/i-built-an-icm-folder-that-teaches-me-software-dev?p=979badc2