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Everything public in the server, which is most of the talking.
- #welcome
- #announcements
- #the-lounge
Redirected from ai.bigmachine.io
The room where the code gets better.
The Big Machine community lives on Discord now. Same people, same questions, and the same habit of reading each other’s code before it ships. Circle is gone and none of what you paid for went with it.
Sign in first and I can hand you the right access on the way in. Your Circle membership came across with you, so if you paid for something, it is waiting.
It is free to make an account
21 online right now
#the-lounge
Claude wrote a repository layer I did not ask for. How do I make it stop?
#the-lounge
Is a 900 line component ever defensible, or am I just tired?
#show-and-tell
Shipped the thing. Two users, both of them me, but it is live.
#core-chat
Write the spec first and the agent stops inventing requirements.
#the-lounge
Postgres or SQLite for this, and be honest about why.
#show-and-tell
Rewrote it a third time and it finally reads like one person wrote it.
#core-chat
My CLAUDE.md is now longer than the app. Is that the failure state?
#the-lounge
Everyone keeps saying tests slow you down. Mine caught four things this week.
01What is in there
Nine rooms, and someone in most of them.
Discord is not fancy, which turns out to be the whole point. Messages arrive, code blocks render, threads work, and you probably already have it open. I am in there most days and I read everything.
The open rooms are open to anyone with an account. The tagged ones unlock from what you already pay for, and connecting your account is what applies them, so there is nothing for you to ask me for.
#welcome
Start here. What the place is and how it works.
#announcements
What just shipped: lessons, videos, live sessions.
#the-lounge
The main room. Ask anything, someone has been there.
#show-and-tell
PremiumPost what you built and tag it Fun, Wow, Fail, or Money Maker.
#core-chat
CoreThe inner circle, talking shop most days.
#live-sessions
CoreWhere we get on a call and work through it together.
#recordings
CoreEvery session, kept, for the times you could not make it.
#alumni-discussion
CorePeople who have been through a cohort and stuck around.
#cohort-announcements
CoreDates, prep, and what is happening next.
02What unlocks
Your access follows you in.
There is nothing to buy for Discord and nothing to ask me for. Connecting reads what you already own and applies the matching roles on the way through the door.
Any subscription
Premium
The open rooms, plus the place where people post what they built.
Everything in Open, and
- #show-and-tell
Cohort and inner circle
Core
The rooms I am in most days, live working sessions, and the recordings.
Everything above, and
- #core-chat
- #live-sessions
- #recordings
- #alumni-discussion
- #cohort-announcements
Takes about fifteen seconds
03Why we moved
I left Circle, and I am not going back.
Circle is a real product and plenty of people run lovely communities on it. I am not here to tell you it is bad software. It was bad software for me, and after a couple of years of trying to make it fit I stopped pretending that was going to change.
So here is the honest accounting, because you deserve to know why the thing you bookmarked stopped existing.
It never really clicked
I gave it a genuine go for a long time. Posted, set things up, moved things around, tried again. It never turned into the room I had in my head, and at some point you have to admit the thing is not working out.
I could not figure it out
Every time I sat down to change something small I lost an hour faffing about in settings, clicking through panels, guessing. I have been doing this for twenty five years. If I cannot work out where the button is, that is not on me.
Too many problems
Imports that half-finished. Members who could see a space one day and not the next. Every month there was some new thing gone pear-shaped that I had to go and untangle by hand.
The bugs
Posts rendering sideways, video that would not embed, notifications that fired for some people and not others. Little stuff, over and over, until I stopped trusting that anything I posted actually arrived.
The upgrades were not for me
Every few months the thing I had learned moved somewhere else, and what showed up in its place was aimed at a much bigger operation than mine. I want a place to talk to you, not a growth suite.
The price
It costs real money every month, and it kept going up. Paying that for a room nobody was hanging out in got hard to justify, and I would rather spend it on making the courses better.
04The bit you were about to ask
Everything that stops people clicking.
Do I need to make a new account?
No. Same Big Machine account you already have. You click connect, Discord asks if that is alright, and the bot puts you in the server with the right access already applied. There is no invite code and nothing to paste.
What happened to everything that was on Circle?
It came across. The posts and the videos that were worth keeping live on this site now, in your account, and they are not going anywhere. The conversation is the part that moved.
I paid for a cohort. Does that still count?
It does, and you do not have to ask me for it. Connecting reads what you already own and hands you the matching roles on the way in. If it ever looks wrong, hit re-sync and it recalculates from scratch.
Is it free to be in there?
The open rooms are free to anyone with an account, and that is where most of the conversation happens. The tagged rooms unlock from what you already pay for. Nothing new to buy to say hello.
I do not really use Discord.
Neither did I, in the sense that I had it installed and ignored it. It turns out that is the advantage. Messages arrive, code blocks render, threads work, and the app is already on your machine.
Will you actually be in there?
Most days. I read everything, I answer the hard ones, and I run the live sessions myself. That is the entire reason I moved: I wanted a room I would actually open.
Come on over.
Nothing you paid for went anywhere. Your courses, your videos, your books are all still in your account, and your membership carries straight into the server.
21 of us are in there right now