Module 1 · Learn to drive: how to tell AI what to build

The recipe: how to describe what you want

The one skill this entire course rests on is describing what you want clearly. There’s a simple recipe for it — five short parts — and it’s the difference between Claude building the right thing on the first try and building something you didn’t mean.

The five-part recipe

You don’t need technical words. You need to answer five plain-English questions. Write them out before you build anything — a few sentences each is plenty.

1. The job. What does the tool do? One sentence.
2. The input. What do you give it?
3. The output. What do you get back — exactly?
4. The look. How should it feel to use? Plain words: clean, calm, easy to read, your brand colors.
5. The boundaries. What should it not do? (Touch the internet, save your data anywhere, invent numbers.)

Then end every kickoff prompt with the same two lines. These two sentences do more than any technical instruction could:

• “Before you write any code, tell me your plan in plain English.” This lets you catch a misunderstanding before a single file exists — while it’s free to fix.
• “Keep it simple — this runs on my computer, just for me.” This stops Claude from over-engineering. You want the small, reliable version, not the enterprise one.

What a filled-in recipe looks like

Here’s the whole recipe filled in for a tiny tool — a tip splitter for a group dinner. Notice there’s not one technical word in it. You’re describing the result, not the software.

I want to build a small tool.

The job: split a restaurant bill across a group and work out each person's share, including tip.

The input: the total bill amount, the number of people, and the tip percentage I want to leave.

The output: a single web page I can open on my computer. I type in the three numbers and it shows me the tip amount, the grand total, and what each person owes — updating as I type.

The look: clean and simple, with big, easy-to-read numbers. It should work on my phone too.

The boundaries: everything runs in the page itself — no internet, no accounts, nothing saved anywhere.

Before you write any code, tell me your plan in plain English. Keep it simple — this runs on my computer, just for me.

That’s a complete, build-ready description. You could paste it into Claude Code right now and get a working tip splitter back. The recipe scales: the same five parts describe the proposal tool, the dashboard, or anything you dream up later.

What you never have to say

Here’s the freeing part. You don’t choose a programming language. You don’t pick a framework. You don’t name files or decide how anything works under the hood. Claude makes every one of those calls — that’s its job, not yours.

Your job is to describe the outcome and then judge the result on screen: is this what I asked for? Does it feel right? If a part of you feels you should understand the code, let that go. An owner doesn’t read the wiring diagram of the delivery van — they check that the packages arrive.