Shipped It, Then Took It Back Down
Shipped a live Claude tool on the site, pulled it back to local-only the same day, and fixed the Learn page's stale quiz pitch while I was in there.
// Pillar I — Learn
Encode
Learning in public. Sessions where I sit down at zero and try to leave with one thing locked. The misses are part of the data.
Learn
Learning Claude by building — six real projects, one lane →
Six varied, real builds, one at a time, each earning its own concepts as it needs them. No typecasting — the lane gets picked at the end, from evidence. Start with P1.
Free resource
Project Instructions Generator — a copy-paste prompt →
Hand Claude this prompt and it interviews you, then writes a strong set of Project instructions built on the four ingredients pros use. Free — grab it or get it emailed.
Now building P2 — the agent starts taking actions ▶
Learning the tool I build with every day, by building with it — six real, varied projects, one at a time, each pulling in exactly the Claude Platform concepts it needs. P1 (a single API call wired into a real workflow) shipped E38. P2 is a small lookup-and-answer agent — the loop, and tool use.
I Explained It Six Times Before I Wrote a Single Line
My first live Claude API call. I explained it flawlessly six times while the file sat empty, then found my best decisions trapped in dead comments.
First Cert Down. Then I Rebranded the Whole Thing.
Finished Claude 101, certificate and all — now onto the next two. This session was the unglamorous part: a rebrand, study guides, and a Hire Me page.
I Built a Whole School to Get Out of Doing the Homework
Sat down to study Claude 101. Instead I built the entire course into my site, repainted the whole place, and studied exactly one quiz. A confession.
I'd Been Running a Claude Project for Months Without Knowing It
Module 2 taught me what a Claude Project is — and I realised I'd been hand-building one in my terminal the whole time.
When a Lesson's Objectives Are Met, the Lesson Is Done
I scrapped a data cert to learn the tool I already run three pipelines on, and finished the first module by refusing to polish it.
It Ran. That Was the Easy Part.
My code worked on my phone, so I thought I was done. Then an army of AI reviewers handed me a B minus. The gap between working and safe.
I Watched Six Videos and Remembered Nothing (On Purpose)
I watched six videos, understood all of it, and recalled none of it thirty seconds later. A short field report on the fluency illusion.
I Had the Answer Key. I Closed the Tab.
The graded quiz was one paste away — and it even tried to hijack the AI to answer for me. Here's why I closed it and studied instead.
You Can't Recall a Structure You Never Built
Three sessions stalled trying to recall one definition cold. The fix wasn't more recall — it was building it up a rung at a time, then sealing it last.
I Watched the Whole Module. Then I Got the Wrong Word.
Session 25 of the Google Data Analytics cert: why watching the whole module and knowing the material are not the same thing.
Months of Data, Not One Row I Could Query
I started the Google Data Analytics course, then opened my own life logs to analyze. Months of records, and not one row I could query.
Learn the Tool by Turning It on Yourself
I'm pausing Python for the Google Data Analytics cert — the skill behind the tool I build. I'll learn it on my own life, not a textbook.
You Don't Own a Line You Copied
Two CS50 Python submissions in one sitting. The real lesson: typing a line someone hands you teaches you nothing.
The Escalator That Says No
I encoded four Python keywords into a house I used to live in. One of them hums 'no no no no no.' This is what studying looks like now.
Make the Image the Definition
What I thought was a session about conditionals turned into a rewrite of how I encode vocabulary at all.
Some Days the Method Is the Work
Sat down to watch a 15-min video. Codified three method improvements instead. Some days the improvements ARE the work.
The Calculator That Printed 12
Expected 3, got 12. The fix was one word — but the lock was watching the bug fire on my own machine.
Tired Brains Can't Fake Predictions
Showed up post-night-shift, locked one concept by REPL prediction, caught a new gap I'd never have seen on a 'make sense?' cadence.
Naming a Concept Isn't the Same as Locking It
Made it through Sections 14 and 15 of CS50P, then ran a test. Half the answers were wrong on operators I'd just covered.
The Label Was The Lie
Claude cited a summary file as if it were a transcript and built false vocabulary on top of it. The hard rule that came out of catching it.
Six Reps Didn't Stick. Two Lines Did.
Drilled an f-string definition six times. Didn't stick. Typed two lines in a Python REPL — locked in one contrast.
Watching Is Consumption. Doing Is Encoding.
Three hours of architecture, one championship memory image, and one missed step that proved why the IDE matters.
The Reps That Don't Feel Like Wins
A 5 out of 10. Three new loci encoded, two swapped on the test, the lecture got skipped. Sometimes the messy reps are the ones that compound.
Different Instrument, Different Signal
Tested the same 13 palace items with two instruments and got 7.7% with one, 100% with the other. The instrument shapes the result.
The Locus Holds Longer Than the Definition
Cold walk: 1 of 13 clean. Rapid drill same day: 8 of 13. The structural cue decays slower than the content riding on it.
Three Days Later, Half the Palace Was Gone
Three days ago I declared four palace anchors locked. Today's cold walk found half of them collapsed. Memorization without retrieval is a lie.
I Thought Python Threw the Error. PowerShell Did.
I guessed Python threw the error. PowerShell did. The correction stuck because I'd already committed to the wrong answer.
The Error Message Teaches Faster Than the Pretest
Session 5. Typed hello.py twice without the python prefix, got yelled at by the shell twice, and finally understood what an interpreter does.
Protection That Takes Longer Than the Work Is Not Protection
Session four was CS50P Lecture 0. Fifty-five minutes in, I hadn't typed a line of Python — the pipeline I built to protect the session was eating it.
Research Before Taste, When the Thing Has to Last
Sat down to build a learning tracker in twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of research later, the schema I would have shipped was wrong.
The Rule You Wrote Yesterday Is the Rule You'll Try to Break Today
Encode v1.0 was finished at midnight after a ninety-minute argument. The first real session tried to skip the rules. The rules held.
Tooling Isn't Learning
Day 2 of CS50P was supposed to be Lecture 0. Instead it was 45 minutes fighting the Windows Python shim. Zero curriculum. Streak preserved. 4/10.
Nine Days Off and the Palace Starts to Fog
A nine-day gap proved that memory decay is a maintenance problem, not a technique problem.
Hello, Engram
Engram is the memory training thread — spaced repetition, encoding techniques, and what I can actually recall a year from now.
Hello, Encode
Encode is where AI learning gets locked into memory palaces — not just studied, but placed somewhere I can walk back to and retrieve.