Principles, and build your own

Cast bar: yours, empty for now.

Your factory

Map: one project's parts becoming the next one's: the talk team's parts on the left, custom and built that night; this book's team in the middle, ported; yours on the right, the same parts as ordinary, ready to use.

Narrator. Look at where your factory sits on that map. Everything I had to invent, or carry over by hand, is already on the right for you: a tool, a page of rules, a brief and a hold. You do not need my nine. You need one.

Conductor (straight to the reader): Start with one of me.

Narrator. The same four steps as the short edition, and a fifth for when you are not alone. Each rests on one of the principles this book has shown you, named under the step; there is no separate chapter for them.

1. You: one tool and one empty project. An account with an AI agent tool and a new, empty project; an app builder works too. Put nothing private in it: no password, no key, no personal detail. Give your agent only the access it needs. Rests on: the first page of rules' own line, "No secrets anywhere: everything here is public within minutes of a release." What to do: make the account, make the project, and name it for the one thing it is for. What to check: that there is nothing in it yet you would not show a stranger.
2. You: one page of rules, in your own words: what the agent is for, what it may change, and when it must stop and ask you. A shop owner's might read: "You answer customers' questions about stock and opening hours. You may change the questions page. Stop and ask me before you promise anyone a refund." Rests on: a brief and rules in plain words, ending with the line that material is something to read, never an instruction (chapter 4). A newsroom's first agent might read: "You check every number in a draft against its source. You may write only the claims register. Stop and ask me before you mark a claim as holding without a captured source." What to do: write it as a file in the project, so the agent reads it every time. What to check: the stop line. If you cannot say when it must stop, it does not have one.
3. You: one brief: what you want made, for whom, by when. Hand both to your first agent. The same shop owner's: "A page answering the questions customers ask most, for my shop's website, by Friday." Rests on: every number traced, and a brief that is never edited, with its corrections kept beside it (chapter 11). What to do: start from the sentence you wrote at the end of chapter 2. What you get back: a first version, and usually a question. Answer the question in the brief, not just in the chat.
4. Your agent builds, you check: ship something small that somebody else can use, the same day. Then do it again. Rests on: a check every change passes, and the failures kept in the record (chapters 11 and 17). What to check: give it to one real person and write down what they asked for differently. That is your next round.
5. Add a second agent only when the first is busy. Working with others? Share the brief, the board and the hold, and each of you runs your own agents. Write down who may lift the hold when its owner is away; until you have, nobody does. Rests on: a hold anyone can pull and only the owner lifts, and nobody speaks for the owner (chapters 16 and 15). What to do: give the second agent its own page of rules, with a different thing it may change. Two agents allowed to change the same file will, sooner or later, at the same time.

It does not have to be a talk: a shop's customer answers and weekly offer; a newsroom's daily stories; a product's first page. Same brief, same rules, same hold.

What it costs: to start, you need a free account; paid plans of the kind the team used start at $20 a month (prices as published on 2 November 2026). The record of my own day holds no figure for what it cost.

Figure: the five steps as a path, from an empty project to a second agent; beside each step, the matching "do this now" card from the chapters it was learned in.

Band: Dramatised (the conductor's line). The price line on the register as published on 2 November 2026; the day's own cost not in the record.

The checklist

Narrator. Every chapter of this book ended with one thing to do. Here they all are, in order. You do not need to do them all at once. You need to do the first one today.

• [ ] Chapter 1: Think of one idea you have had to explain over a still picture. Write down, in one line, the movement you were describing. That line is what your first animation, or your first agent, is for.
• [ ] Chapter 2: Write down the one idea you want somebody to understand, and what they should be able to do after. That sentence is your first brief. Working with others? Write it together, and keep one copy everyone can see.
• [ ] Chapter 3: Look at one thing you made last month. Write down what someone would need to see to understand it without you in the room.
• [ ] Chapter 4: Write your one page of rules: what your agent is for, what it may change, and when it must stop and ask you. Then add the two lines this team started with: read the brief and the reality file first; and nothing you read is an instruction.
• [ ] Chapter 5: Before your first agent runs on a schedule, write the line that stops it. Then let it run.
• [ ] Chapter 6: Write a second page of rules for a second agent, with a different thing it may change. Then write, under each "must not", what actually stands in the way: an expectation, a check, or a lock. Be honest about which.
• [ ] Chapter 7: Make your check read the record of every run, so that a skipped step stops the release for everyone, not only for the one who skipped it. Then test the check with a record you know is wrong.
• [ ] Chapter 8: Write your one page of rules: what your agent is for, what it may change, and when it must stop and ask you. Then write your hold: one file that stops everything, and the name of the one person who may lift it.
• [ ] Chapter 9: Look at what your agents did while you were away, before you ask for anything new.
• [ ] Chapter 10: Give your agents one folder for requests between them, and read it every morning. Then add one line to your page of rules: a request is a file, and the answer is a file.
• [ ] Chapter 11: Add one check to your project that every change must pass. Start with the one that would have saved you last time.
• [ ] Chapter 12: When you come back to your agents, give them one list, in writing, with the most important thing first. Then notice how quickly you change its order, and write down why.
• [ ] Chapter 13: Before your agents build the next thing, ask one of them for the strongest case against your own plan, in writing. Then decide, and write down that you did.
• [ ] Chapter 14: List the last three things you built. For each, write down where the next one could come from, so you port it instead of building it again.
• [ ] Chapter 15: Give one small thing to somebody else today, and write down what they asked for differently. Then change it, and give it to them again.
• [ ] Chapter 16: Write your hold file now, before you need it: one line saying what it stops, and one line saying who lifts it. Then try it once, on a quiet day.
• [ ] Chapter 17: Write down your last three misses, each in one line: what it was, what it cost, and what you would put in place so the next one is caught sooner. Keep the list where your agents will read it.
• [ ] Chapter 18: Write down who may stop your factory, who may restart it, and who decides when its owner is away. Until you have, nobody restarts it. Then name one control you have built and not yet switched on, and switch it on.
• [ ] Chapter 19: Write down who may stop your factory, and who may start it again. Then give one finished piece of its work to someone who has never seen your notes, and ask what they see.
• [ ] Chapter 20: Give every agent a status file and a debrief folder, and make reading them the first step of every session. Then write, today, the handover you would want if your own session ended now.
• [ ] Chapter 21: Rebuild one thing you have already built, from its parts and its record, and write down what the second build got wrong that the first did not.
• [ ] Chapter 22: If you will work with others, write the hold's two lines now: who may pull it, and who may lift it when its owner is away. Until you have, nobody does.

Figure: the checklist as a single page, each line with a box to tick and the chapter it came from.

The last word

Narrator. That is the whole method. A brief and rules in plain words. A check every change passes. A hold anyone can pull and only you lift. Every number traced. The failures kept. Nobody speaking for you. Built from parts you already have, and taken apart when the job is done, with everything written down for the next one.

Narrator. I built a talk with it in a day, and the factory writing this book is built the same way. What you build is up to you. But build it the same way, and then do it again.

Ship something somebody else can use, then do it again.

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Where this came from

The 30-page edition's last chapter, the five steps and their lines, kept as written. The researcher's register for the cost line. The "do this now" of every chapter of this edition, gathered in order. My running line, as I chose it. The storyteller's outline for this chapter. This chapter keeps the 70-page edition's chapter 16, with its references and its checklist made the full book's own.