Learn to build your app with AI, alongside an engineer
Set up your AI development tools, work through a real app change with Nicholas Howell, and learn how to review, test, and maintain it.
01Bring a project and a question
For founders who want to understand and participate in building their app, and small teams improving how they use AI coding tools. You might be setting up for the first time, stuck with a prototype, or unsure how to check an agent's work.
Work one-on-one with Nicholas Howell on a bounded task from your project. Agree on a learning goal that fits your experience. A first session might focus on setup and a local change; releasing a feature needs the appropriate checks and access too.
02Set up a workflow you can understand
Review your existing tools and repository before adding anything. Agree on accounts, subscriptions or usage costs, permissions, and what information the tools may see. Use sample data while learning, and keep secrets out of prompts and source files.
Write down the app's purpose, current constraints, and how to run and test it. Turn one goal into a small task with expected behavior. The useful setup is one you can repeat, not a collection of agents you cannot explain.
03Work through a real change together
Give the tool the relevant context, inspect its proposal, and compare the result with the task. Read the important changes, try the user journey, and test the failure that would matter most. Keep the change small enough to understand and undo.
You'll practice asking for evidence, spotting unsupported assumptions, and deciding when to stop and investigate. If the task is ready for release, work through the existing deployment process; otherwise record the blockers and the next check.
04Leave with a next step you can repeat
The agreed outputs can include a working local setup, project instructions, a reviewed change, test results, and a short guide to the next task. Record unresolved questions and who owns deployment and ongoing maintenance.
Coaching does not make every generated change safe to ship or replace experience with sensitive data, payments, and complex infrastructure. We can identify where you can continue independently and where another review would help.
05Tell me what you want to learn by doing
Share your app idea or current project, your experience with coding and AI tools, and the task you'd like help with. We can agree on a useful goal, prerequisites, scope, and price before starting. Leave credentials and private customer data out of the message.
Discuss building together →