Do hard things.

What this course is

Most courses teach you to use AI. This one teaches you to build with it. Over twelve weeks you'll:

1. Build your own AI assistant on your laptop, one piece at a time, using a tool called Claude Code. We pay for access.
2. Find one tedious job that a real person at a real business does by hand every week, and get that person to work with you.
3. Make your assistant do that job, then run it inside their business for five working days.
4. Pitch the business behind it in a three-minute video, judged live by alumni founders on Thursday, November 19.

You keep the assistant. It follows you through the rest of the minor.

Two things happen here. One is knowledge, and you'll memorize it. The other is habits: deciding with incomplete information, committing, and changing direction when the world says no. The habits are the point, and you can only practice them on something real, with people who can actually tell you no.

A normal week

• Monday: build. In class, you add one piece to your AI assistant (a skill, a hook, a rule, memory, then helper agents) and show it working to a classmate. Nothing is turned in on Mondays. The one graded build is Mon Oct 19, when all the pieces have to run your team's job together.
• Wednesday: venture. One question about starting a business (what's a market? what's a customer interview?), then you put the answer to work on your project. Read that week's chapters before class.
• Friday: write. Your Venture Log, in the Google Form, by 11:59pm: 500 to 800 words on what you tried, what you learned, what you decided. It's yours alone, it's the main thing I read, and from Week 3 it reports two numbers: how many real people your team has talked to, and how many parts of the job your assistant handles for real. Anything else due that week goes in Canvas the same night.

Plan on about eight hours a week outside class, more in Weeks 5–7 and 10–11.

The project

Teams of two or three. You find one tedious job that a real person at a real business does by hand every week, get that person to work with you, build an assistant that does the job, run it in their business for five working days, and pitch it on Nov 19. The business you build it for is one. The other ten with the same job are the market. What counts, what's off limits, and every floor (conversations, observation, before-and-after numbers) are written into the assignments themselves on the checklists page. How to find a good job and tell it from a bad one is in the guide.

Why not just pitch a startup idea? Every founder's real first job is finding the work nobody wants to do and doing it better. Most of the businesses that get started in the next ten years will look like this: someone watched a person do a job slowly, built a thing that did it faster, and then went looking for the other ten thousand people doing the same job. I'd rather you learn to see those jobs than write a plan for a company that doesn't exist yet.

Schedule

Twelve weeks. Everything in the last column is due Friday at 11:59pm unless it says otherwise. Read the chapters before that Wednesday's class. Last class day is Fri Dec 4. No final exam. Reading days Oct 8–9 don't affect us.

How you're graded

There are no points and nothing is averaged. Every assignment is marked Satisfactory (it meets the checklist) or Needs Revision (fix it and resubmit). Your letter grade is the set of work you finish:

Why it works this way. Points let you skip one thing and make it up with another. This doesn't. A student who builds a great assistant but writes no logs doesn't earn a B, because the log is where the thinking shows. Every assignment is a yes or a no against a checklist you can read before you start. If it comes back, you fix it. That loop (decide, turn it in, get told no, fix it) is the course.

Tokens. You start with two. Each buys one late submission (up to 72 hours), one redo of something marked Needs Revision, or one absence forgiven. They don't carry over. Without a token, late work isn't accepted, and a Monday demo you miss costs one. I'll remind you what you have left in Weeks 3 and 8.

Absences. A doctor's note or a confirmed varsity obligation excuses you. The Nov 19 competition is required, counts as a class day, and a token doesn't cover it.

My checking assistant. Before I look at anything you built (the Monday pieces, your assistant v1), my own agent reads it first. It checks two things: does it run and do what you say, and is it your design rather than something copied. You get its report within a day and 48 hours to fix things before I look. It's one opinion, not the grade. Something that passes the check but has a log that says nothing about why still comes back.

Extra projects (the original calls them mastery options). Team work, due Fri Dec 11 with the Final Dossier. Two for a B, four for an A. Each has a hard minimum; "we tried" comes back. Full checklists on the checklists page.

1. Talk to the other ten. Six or more conversations with organizations from your list of ten, and a two-page write-up.
2. Run it somewhere else. Your assistant runs at a second business for five working days.
3. Sell it. A real stranger pays at least $5 for work your assistant does.
4. Test the market. A live landing page, a campaign you actually ran, and honest numbers.
5. Break it on purpose. Forty or more real inputs, tested before and after a change.
6. Write the manual. Your contact's coworker runs the assistant from your instructions while you watch and don't help.
7. Plan the business. Three partners, a twelve-month roadmap, a budget with the math per customer.

What each grade means you can do

Everyone who passes (C) can:

• Explain what the pieces of an assistant are and what each is for
• Interview and observe real people to document how a job works today, in their words
• Build an assistant that does a real job at all three steps and show it running on real information
• Keep a weekly record of decisions, evidence, and guesses that someone else could check

A B means you can also:

• Break a job into its collect, summarize, flag, and send steps and say which an assistant can own
• Compare what the assistant does against what the person did before and judge where it's better, worse, and unsafe
• Defend what you handed to the assistant, what you kept, and the rule that makes each safe

An A means you can also:

• Build an assistant a real organization runs without you and measure it against the numbers you took in Week 5
• Make the case for who pays, what it's worth, and what it costs, to outside judges
• Show the job exists beyond your first customer, and propose what to build next

Questions people ask

• Can I get a B with no extra projects if my core work is excellent? No. Excellent core work is a C.
• What if my team carries me, or I carry my team? Team assignments are shared credit. Logs, Monday pieces, your assistant v1, the reflection, and the peer evaluation are yours alone. I read the peer evaluations.
• What if my contact backs out? Tell me the day it happens. You get a token-free week to find another; the conversation count still has to move.
• Rounding, extra credit, a curve? No, no, and no.

Books

Two, both short. Read each week's chapters before that Wednesday. Then one memo per book (500–1,000 words): two or three ideas from it, tied to your project with real examples, one thing you'll do because of it, one question it raised you can't answer yet. Not a book report. One memo for a B, both for an A.

• Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence. What to hand to AI, what to keep, and how to tell. Memo due Fri Oct 30.
• Sahil Lavingia, The Minimalist Entrepreneur. Start from a community you're already in, charge from day one, build great not big. Memo due Fri Nov 13.

Policies

AI

• AI isn't just allowed here. It's required. The course can't happen without it.
• You may not have AI write your Venture Logs, book memos, or final reflection. Those are the record of your thinking. I read them for specifics, and an AI's specifics aren't yours. A grammar pass is fine; say so in the audit trail.
• Treat everything AI produces as unverified. Check anything you cite, invoice, send, or promise.
• Never make up an interview or present AI output as something a person said. That's an integrity violation, and it can fail you.
• You own the output. "The AI did it" isn't a defense for a broken automation, a made-up number, or an email your assistant sent that it shouldn't have.
• Reading, copying, and improving each other's assistants is encouraged. Say where you got it.
• Your assistant will touch real people's information at a real business. Before it does, your team and your contact agree in writing on what it may read, what it may send, and who checks. That agreement is part of your team plan in Week 3. Until Week 11, nothing leaves the building without a hand on it.

Showing up

Most of the course happens in the room. Unexcused absences are capped by grade: three for a C, two for a B, one for an A. Documented illness or a confirmed varsity obligation is excused. A token forgives one other absence. Phones down and off during class. Laptops open during demos.

How we work

Four sayings, finished with you in Week 1: "Listen to understand, not to respond." "Feedback: be kind, not nice." "Test, don't debate." "Show the assistant doing the work. The work argues for itself." Things will break in front of the class. That's the curriculum. A broken, honest demo beats a polished one that only works on the easy case.

Academic integrity

Honesty in evidence and attribution is non-negotiable. In this course that means citing sources, reporting what your assistant actually did, and never making up an interview, a test result, or a sale. Academic dishonesty may result in failing the course.

Accommodations

I'm committed to making this course work for every student. Reasonable accommodations are available for students with disabilities. Contact Lauren Kozak, Title IX Coordinator and Director of Disability Resources, to discuss your needs confidentially: wlu.edu/disability-accommodations. If you already have approved accommodations, meet with me in the first two weeks so we can plan together.

Getting help

Office hours Mondays and Wednesdays 1:45–2:30 in Holekamp 109, and by appointment. Email jmargalus@wlu.edu gets a reply within one working day. If your contact backs out, your team falls apart, or your assistant eats a week, tell me the day it happens. Don't sit on it until Friday's log.

What's new

• Oct 7Slides for today, Name your price: pricing as a game, Minimalist ch. 3, and team time before reading days.
• Sep 21Put back the paragraph on why you're fixing a tedious job instead of pitching a startup idea, under the project. Wording pass on the rest.
• Sep 21Front page cut to what binds you: this week, the course, a normal week, the project in one paragraph, the schedule, grading, books, policies. Rules that belong to an assignment moved onto that assignment's checklist; the word list moved to the guide.
• Sep 21Monday builds (skill, hook, rule, memory) are no longer graded checkpoints. You still build them in class and write them up in the log; the one graded build is your assistant, version 1, on Oct 19. The how-to material (ten questions, four tests, examples, Monday by Monday) moved to the guide so the syllabus is just the rules.
• Sep 21This plain-language version. Same rules and dates as the old syllabus, in two pages instead of seven, with "The words we use" and a "This week" box. Tell me what's still confusing.