Graph-based orchestration.
Your plan is a graph of tasks with dependencies. Agents pick up whatever is unblocked and you hold the gates. This is the newest thing in the toolbox and the most fun.
3weeks
6live sessions
25seats, hard cap
∞recordings kept
01The theme this round
Leverage.
For most of my career, the things I wanted to build got cut because coding takes time and there was never enough of it. That’s changed. With AI doing the typing you can exploreideas that used to be off the table, and see what’s actually possible.
That’s the theme for this cohort. You bring an idea you’ve wanted to build, we spend 3 weeks building it, and you leave with a working system and a way of working that you’ll keep.
Rob’s insatiable curiosity in balance with the practicalities of enterprise-grade solutions makes him perfectly qualified to lead adventures into the bleeding edge of technology. I thoroughly enjoyed my cohort and can’t wait to see what Rob produces next.
JW
Jim Wilson
CEO, OAGi
02How we build
We do not vibe code.
Vibe coding gets you a demo. Six weeks later it gets you a codebase nobody can change. We don’t do that. We give the AI tight instructions and clear architectural constraints, and we build with the patterns and principles we already know.
You get the skill set I use every day, which carries those patterns and principles into every session. What comes out is highly tested, well tuned, and easy to change when the next model shows up.
- A spec before a prompt
- Command/query separation, one transaction per command, a composition root
- BDD specs written first, one assertion each, with a gate that blocks the merge
- Small pieces you can change without breaking the rest
There is no doubt that Rob’s cohort has changed the way I work in general and specifically the way I work with Claude Code. Rob has a rather unique pragmatic and outcome oriented approach to software development compared to some of the more dogmatic approaches found. I feel more in control of the process I use with Claude and have been able to align Claude with the way I need to work because of this course.
JN
Jonas Nissen
Senior Manager
03What is current
The frontier, as of this week.
The tools change every few weeks, so the syllabus is written right before we start. Right now that means graph-based agentic orchestration, skill libraries, and a hard look at which frontier models are worth your money. We’ll use whatever is working when we run.
A skill library that is yours.
Your patterns, your principles, your review checklist, the way you like a test written. Packaged so every session starts with your standards loaded, in Claude Code, Codex, or Copilot.
The loop that runs without you.
Pre-commit gates, CI, issues and PRs wired in, so an agent can work while you sleep without breaking main. You review in the morning.
04The schedule
Six sessions over three weeks.
Two sessions a week. Two of the six are open drop-ins with no agenda, because the best questions never show up on schedule.
Every session recorded and transcribed. Times are picked to work across timezones, and the recordings are yours to keep.
05The rooms
Six doors that stay open after the cohort ends.
Buying a seat puts you in the Core rooms on the Big Machine Discord, and you keep them. It’s a small room of people who have shipped things, and I’m in there most days. When something breaks in March, this is where you ask.
#core-chat
The main room. Ask anything, any day.
#live-sessions
The stage. Where the cohort runs.
#workshops
Hands on the keyboard, together.
#member-sessions
Voice. Drop in when the light is on.
#session-recordings
Every session, recorded and posted.
#alumni-discussion
The long game, with people who have played it.
06Who it is for
Built for people who already ship.
Senior programmers. Ten or so years of production code, already using Claude or Cursor every day, and ready to find out what these tools can really do when you push them.
The room caps at 25 so I can read what you’re working on and the drop-ins get spent on real problems.
If this would be your first programming course, this isn’t the place. Same if you want to ship slop fast. We don’t do that here.
07From the last cohort
What people did with it the week after.
Just got home from work where we did an AI hackathon with the HR department. It was a big success and it made me realize what I’ve learned in the cohort. One thing that stood out was the process of interviewing, developing and verifying. It already is so normal for me to have Claude interview me. Guess what, not everyone is familiar with that process. The discussions and experiences from the cohort definitely made me prepared for the AI era!
AF
Andrew Flierman
Senior .NET Developer, Manager
Today I had 2 episodes where I shined, because of this course. First my customer had a long talk about agentic development. Everything on a “I have read about it” level. Me being able to engage in the talk with practical experience was invaluable. Second was about classification of documents for my startup. Just added an online editor for skills, and used Claude CLI to do the classification. So simple, and so powerful.
NL
Nicolaj Lindtner
Senior .NET Developer
08Who runs it
Hi, I’m Rob.
I wrote The Imposter’s Handbook, spent three years on the VS Code team at Microsoft, and I’ve been shipping software for 25 years. I run agent fleets every day, because that’s how I work now.
What I teach in these 3 weeks is what I’d tell a senior programmer joining my team on day one, including the parts I got wrong along the way.
25+
years shipping
3
years on the VS Code team
2014
The Imposter's Handbook
One payment, one cohort
$1,495
Fall 2026 cohort · nothing renews · fourteen day guarantee
- Six live working sessions over 3 weeks, on your own project
- Two open drop-in sessions with no agenda
- The skill library I build with, patterns and principles included
- Recordings, transcripts, and the working repo, yours to keep
- The Core rooms on Discord, kept after the cohort ends
- Email support from me while we are running
- A room capped at 25 people
Not sure yet?
Pop your email in and I’ll send you a few notes over the next week: what we build in the Fall 2026 cohort, how the sessions run, and whether it’s a fit for you. No sales call, no webinar.
Questions? Email me at rob@bigmachine.io.
09Before you ask
The honest answers.
Is this a subscription?
No. One payment of $1,495 for the Fall 2026 cohort. Nothing renews, nothing bills you again, there is no plan to cancel later.
What if it turns out not to be for me?
There is a fourteen day guarantee. Email me inside two weeks and I refund the whole thing, no retention call, no form to fill out.
I don't have a project in mind. Can I still come?
Yes. Bring the thing at work everybody complains about and nobody has time to fix. That usually makes a better project anyway.
I cannot make every session live.
That's fine. Every session is recorded with a transcript and the working repo, and the two drop-ins are there to catch whatever you missed.
I use Cursor or Copilot, not Claude Code.
Most of what I show uses Claude Code because that's what I run every day. The skill library and the patterns carry over. Cursor and Copilot folks do fine here.
Do I need to be a senior developer?
The material assumes you've shipped production code for years and you're comfortable in a terminal.
What happens after I pay?
Stripe hands you back to Big Machine, your account is matched by email, and the Core rooms open up. Session times and the joining details land in your inbox before we start.
Can my company pay for this?
Yes. Email rob@bigmachine.io with a seat count and I'll send an invoice.
25 seats. Come build something great.
3 weeks with senior programmers exploring the frontier, and the rooms after.
Take a seat · $1,495