Feels like everyone else got a head start on this AI thing?
That's not your imagination, but it's also not the whole story. AI tooling is genuinely unlike anything we've worked with before. There's no manual, no certification, no clear path from beginner to proficient. The people who seem ahead of you just started experimenting earlier.
I can show you what they learned.
This Is Infrastructure Now
I've been playing with Claude Code and Copilot for thousands of hours at this point, and I keep coming back to the same realization: the people getting real results aren't better at prompting. They're better at tooling. They've set up their environment so the AI already knows what they need before they type a single character. They've created reusable systems instead of one-off conversations.
Once you see it, you get it. AI isn't a chat window you talk to. It's infrastructure you build on top of.
I've Made Every Mistake
I've screwed up plenty of times. Eight attempts to refactor an Angular app. Eight. I almost shipped buggy code because of a silent SQLite connection error the AI didn't catch. I've lost entire weekends on conversations that went nowhere, watching tokens burn while Claude hallucinated file paths that didn't exist.
But I've also built a PDF compiler that saves me hours every week. I've created custom agents that handle repetitive tasks while I focus on actual work. I've got a system now where my AI tools know my codebase, my preferences, and my patterns before I type anything.
I have custom agents that help me plan my day and my week, and even recommend places to take my lady friend. No, this isn't Openclaw either! I built it because I know how to.
I live for this kind of thing.
The Shift That Made It Click
Small steps! I started to use tightly controlled instructions and skills, together with plan documents and session recaps. This is when things opened for me and I began to see that we're entering a very interesting new period in our careers, and also our lives.
There is a very natural (and understandable) fear of hallucinations and "crap code". There are also groups of people, like me, dedicated to finding patterns to reduce that crap code. It's what the Agile founders were trying to do decades ago, by refining the process, not the tools. It's the same for AI.
What You Will Learn
By the end of this course, you will learn tactical agentic programming, which means that you will learn how to:
- Stop writing prompts directly, making the LLM do it for you.
- Building out a plan with a solid question and answer session, letting your LLM plan for you.
- Create the skills and agents you'll need to execute the plan.
- Think in documents, using planning and recap documents to handcuff your LLM to build exactly what you need while documenting the how and why.
- Understand the billing process, what a token is, and how to make your time with the LLM more cost-effective. Basic "token economics".
Come Build With Me
This course is part of my Big Machine subscription. You get this plus everything else on the site for one price. I've been doing online education since 2009 and I've learned something: the best marketing is helping people get results. If this makes you better at AI tooling, you'll tell someone. That's worth more than squeezing an extra $50 out of you.
I can't promise this will 10x your productivity. That depends on you. What I can promise: if you work through this material and actually implement the tooling, you'll stop thinking of AI as something you "use" and start thinking of it as something you've configured.
The full course outline is below. See what we'll cover, and if it's a fit, I'll see you inside.
