A tiny guide · about 45 minutes

Make something with AI.

The fastest way to learn AI is to build one small thing you actually care about with it, today, on your laptop, for an audience of one (you).

By Julia Maddox · With a hat tip to Todd Blaskowitz, who taught me that the only way to actually learn AI is to do a project you genuinely care about.

The whole idea

If you're like most of my friends, clients, and family, you see AI as either the coolest guy at the party that you're nervous to talk to, or the biggest loser at the party that you're nervous will talk to you.

I prefer to think of AI as the shot of tequila you take before the party that miraculously makes you conversant in Spanish. (Or something much worse if you overdo it.)

This guide is a tiny workbook to help you come up with an idea and actually build it, quickly. (Meta note: I built this guide itself using Claude, following all the steps below.)

AI works best when you bring a real, human-grade idea to the table and iterate on it: "yes, and..."-ing your way forward, asking it to bust your blind spots, using it to think out loud. The project doesn't have to be useful. It has to be yours. The point is just to get your hands on the clay.

Step 1 · Pick something you actually care about

Forget "what should I build with AI?" That's the wrong question. The right question is: what have I been thinking about lately that I'd love to poke at? Some curiosity, or a half-formed rant, or a gift for a friend, or a tool you wish existed for exactly one person (you).

Don't skip the fields below. Writing it down is 80% of the work.

A topic or question that's been rattling around in your head

Who is this for? (Seriously, it's okay if the answer is "just me")

What would make you smile if it existed?

Step 2 · Shrink it down into its simplest form

Your first AI project should be a simple little website: just one file, written for you by the AI in a language called HTML (the same language every web page is built out of). You don't need to know any HTML yourself. You just need to save a file and double-click it. It's a single file you can open in your browser and email to a friend. No frameworks, no accounts, no deploys, no servers. If your idea feels too big, shrink it until it's embarrassingly small. Small is the whole point.

Describe your thing as one sentence starting with "A little web page that…"

Wink: If you're thinking "that's too simple to count," it's perfect. The magic is in the doing, not the scope.

Step 3 · Pick your AI collaborator

Any of these will work on a free account. If you don't have a preference, I'd nudge you toward Claude, because it tends to be a patient, thoughtful collaborator and it's especially good at iterating on creative and written work.

Claude recommended claude.ai. Thoughtful, has good taste, great at iterating and explaining. Free tier works fine for this. ChatGPT chatgpt.com. You probably already have an account. Also fine. Copilot copilot.microsoft.com. Built into Windows and Microsoft 365. Fine if it's already at your fingertips.

Step 4 · Use this as your opening prompt

The trick to a first prompt is to give the AI context about you, constraints about the project, and permission to push back. Click the button and it'll build your prompt from what you typed above.

Fill in the fields above, then click "Build my starter prompt."

Paste this into a fresh chat on your chosen platform, hit send, and read what it makes. Then, and this is the important part, talk back to it.

Step 5 · Iterate like a human, not a customer

This is where most people bail. They see the first version, think "eh, not quite," and close the tab. Please don't do that. The first version is just the opening move. Some things to try next:

Yes, and… "I love the quiz idea. What if each question also had a little illustration described in alt text?"
Bias-bust. "What assumptions did you make about my audience here? What would you do differently if they were kids? If they hated self-help?"
Ask why. "Why did you choose that color palette / structure / tone? Talk me through the trade-offs."
Show, don't summarize. "Give me three different vibes for the landing section and I'll pick."
Be honest. "This feels a little flat. What's missing?"

The real thesis: AI is at its best when you treat it as a thinking partner for your ideas, a very fast sparring buddy who will iterate endlessly and never get sick of you. It's at its worst when you treat it as a vending machine.

Step 6 · Get it onto your screen (in under a minute)

Once the AI has given you HTML you like, here's the whole ceremony:

Copy the HTML the AI gave you.
Open any text editor (TextEdit on a Mac, Notepad on Windows, or even the Notes app if that's what you have).
Paste it in and save the file as my-thing.html. Make sure the extension is .html, not .txt.
Double-click the file and it'll open in your browser. That's your project. It's real now.

Want to send it to a friend? Email them the file and they can double-click it too. Done. You have shipped a thing.

Step 7 · Level up (when you're ready)

At some point you'll hit the limits of a free account, usually mid-iteration, right when things are getting good. When that happens, it's a sign you're ready for a little more:

Upgrade to a paid plan (Claude Pro, ChatGPT Plus, etc.) for longer conversations, bigger files, and more iterations per day.
Try a desktop or agentic tool like Cowork or Claude Code, which can actually read and write files on your computer, so you stop copy-pasting HTML and start saying "update the file."
Host it for real on GitHub Pages, Netlify, or Neocities (all free). Now your weird little thing has a URL you can text to people.

A note before you close this tab

The only thing between you and a first project is about 45 minutes and a willingness to make something slightly embarrassing. You're highly educated and wise and you have good taste. The AI has none of those things, which is why it needs you. It just types fast.

Go make something tiny and weird, and then tell me about it.