Building Software for You by You
You have an idea (an app, a tool, an automation for your work), but you've never shipped software, or you've stalled every time you tried. In this package we take your idea from a sentence to a working prototype in five hours of live 1:1 coaching. The key part is: you build it, not me. AI coding tools like Claude Code have made it possible for non-engineers to build real software, if you know how to operate them. That operating skill is what I teach. You'll be at the keyboard the whole time, prompting, deciding, and shipping, while I coach from the back seat: what to say to the model, what context to give it, how to tell when it's confidently wrong, and what to do when it gets stuck. How the five hours typically run (we'll adapt to your project): Hour 1: Scope and setup. We get AI tools running on your machine and sharpen your idea into a buildable first version. Hours 2–4: You drive, I coach. Guided build sessions on your project. You do the work; I keep you unstuck and teach the patterns as they come up. Hour 5: Make it yours. Debugging habits, a personalized playbook, and a concrete roadmap so you can continue building after we're done.
What's included
Five hours of live 1:1 video sessions with screen sharing, typically split as one 1-hour kickoff plus two 2-hour build sessions. We'll schedule around your availability and energy. My style is hands-on and coach-from-the-back-seat: you share your screen and drive the entire time. I don't send you a finished product. I help you build one, because that's what makes the skills stick. After each session you'll get short written notes covering what we did and what to try before next time.
- A mental model for working with and steering language models to accomplish goals
- A framework for going from idea to working piece of software, even without traditionally technical skills
- A working prototype of your project idea built by you, running by the end of our sessions
- A personalized playbook, following patterns that worked for your project and the way you work and think
Meet your expert
Dan C.
Magnify your expertise: build what you couldn't before with AI
I'm a software engineer who has spent my career building at Uber, Chime, and Square. I've been writing software with coding agents since mid-2023, before most people had heard the term, and for the past two years I've built software exclusively using them. The work that changed my trajectory happened at Square, where I started teaching non-technical contributors to build software with AI tools. I watched people who had never written a line of code, and never expected to, take an idea from their own work and turn it into something real that solved their problem. That experience convinced me the barrier between understanding a problem and building it could be bridged, and that most people just haven't been shown the way through. Today I run wvlen, where I coach professionals and teams learning to build with AI. I help you figure out where these tools fit in your work, then build with you until you're confident to do it independently.