You already make the work. What you want is the studio around it.
So take the whole studio. $250 a month opens
every studio day on this path that has already been filmed — the day you write a playable
story before you go home, the money week, the campaign build — with the exercises, the written
curriculum and the tools you work at. The standups come with it, every week, so
there are always people to show the work to. Want the bench itself?
$500 a month adds a seat in every one of
those classes while it runs. Month to month, cancel any time. You never open a
terminal.
5classes on this path —
publish a story people play, price your own work, keep a voice that stays yours
2sessions already on the calendar —
filmed as they run, so the recordings plan gets every one too
22hours of recorded studio sessions, ready tonight
Most unfinished work stopped because nobody ever counted the hours in it. Pick the shape
of what you want to make, say how many hours a week you really have, and read the answer.
Every assumption in it is yours to change. Your inputs stay here: the counting runs in
this browser, and the hour count is saved in it.
The scope bench
Pick the shape, put your hours in. Week 0 runs the same arithmetic all the way out —
past the hours, into what you charge and what you can afford to make next.
hrs/wk
words
w/hr
%
hrs
A branching story at 12,000 words, drafted at 450 words an hour,
is about 53 hours of work. At 6 hours a week you have a
running skeleton you can play end to end in 2.6 weeks, and the whole
thing finished in 8.8.
53hours of work, all in
2.6weeks to a running skeleton you can play end to end
8.8weeks to finished, at your pace
4.1hours a week to have it done in three months
The first weeks are the ones that decide it. Getting to something
playable early is what tells you whether the idea works while there is still time to
change it. That skeleton is what the studio day is for — you build it in a room, in a day,
with people who will play it back to you.
Two of the benches you get do the money version of this sum: a pricing bench
that works an offering backwards from its floor, and a budget that starts
from the three numbers your life costs. Both are step-by-step, and both are on this path.
The day you sit down and build the skeleton is on the calendar below.
The room you are buying
2 dates are already on the calendar.
Every recording, exercise and written page on this path, on your own clock — plus the standups every week. Anything you finish stays yours. Here is what that looks like on a calendar. You are already in the room,
so you go — and one Saturday you come home able to do a thing you had not planned on being
able to do.
September 2026
11Fri
Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI10:00 am Pacific
· next up
19Sat
Practical Propaganda10:00 am Pacific
Make & Do runs Mon-Thu at
9:00 Pacific in between, so the weeks with nothing on the calendar still have a room
in them. Every one of these days is filmed, and the 22.4 hours
already in the archive open the day you join — before you have been to anything at all,
on either tier.
Add on anytime — keeps your current path. One-time purchase, classes yours to keep.
What you take, in order
Five classes. Each one stands on the last.
You learn to work a model before you build anything with one. You build a structure before
you try to move anybody with it. And you price the work before you decide what the work is,
so the idea you commit to is one you can afford to finish. Beside each class is when the
next one sits down, and what you can do at the end of it.
01
Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI
Next session11 SeptemberFriday · 10:00 am Pacific
Where the path starts, because everything after it assumes you can get a model to do
what you actually meant. It is also the class that teaches you to read a passage for
the devices it is using on you — the same skill, pointed the other way.
Runs under the cohort name “Creative Automation”.
You leave with
a system prompt you reuse, a rubric a model can apply to your own drafts, and
22.4 hours of recordings to go back to.
locate a claim in its primary source
locate the devices a passage uses on you
name an audience and its success criterion
configure an assistants memory and outside connections
elicit output from a model
02
The Interactive Fiction Intensive
A studio day. You come in with an idea and leave with something a stranger can play,
plus the structural vocabulary the composer further down this page is built out of.
You leave with
a playable branching story, published where people can find it.
operate a recorded decision so a later branch depends on it
operate concurrent strands that surface at the right time
operate named states instead of magic numbers
operate state so a branching story neither explodes nor rails
produce a function whose result depends on program state
03
Practical Propaganda
Next session19 SeptemberSaturday · 10:00 am Pacific
Naming an audience and the one thing you want it to do. Writing something that
survives a hostile reading. Watching a claim bend as it gets retold, and finding out
whether what you made changed what anybody actually did.
You leave with
a campaign you can defend under hostile reading, and a way to tell whether it worked.
execute a first touch outbound sequence on schedule
locate the devices a passage uses on you
name an audience and its success criterion
produce an explanation that survives a hostile reading
produce combinations that clash on purpose
04
Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)
The money week, and it comes before the idea. You work out what your life costs, what
your hours are actually worth, and where the floor under your price is — then you go
and have ideas that clear it.
You leave with
three numbers your life costs, an hourly rate you can justify out loud, and an
offering built backwards from its floor.
name an audience and its success criterion
operate a boundary on unpaid work
produce a budget for work whose timeline you have observed
produce the three numbers your life costs
transform naive hours into billable capacity
05
Founding Federation: Build With Your Heart First
A cohort: a standing room, the people in it, and a first-touch sequence you run on a
schedule instead of when you feel brave. Artists come straight here, because for you
the creative work is the business.
You leave with
an outbound sequence you are actually running, and a budget for work whose timeline
you have now watched with your own eyes.
execute a first touch outbound sequence on schedule
produce a budget for work whose timeline you have observed
What you get, and keep
A bench, not a playlist.
The tools that come with this path. Here is what each of them is for.
For the story
Seven pieces of apparatus for the studio day
A companion that runs the day with you, prompt by prompt
A workbook you fill in as the story takes shape
A catalogue of story shapes to pull from
A composition guide for putting those shapes together
A structure atlas for when you want to steal a shape that already works
An authoring toolkit for writing with a model without losing your own voice
A reflection journal, for after — the part most people skip
For the audience
A guided campaign builder, and 8 decks
The campaign builder is one of the guided tools here: it takes you
from “who is this for” to a first touch you can actually send, one screen at a time.
8 decks on framing, platform ecosystems, persona stacks and how a
claim travels
A security primer for people whose work makes them visible
For the money
Two guided benches and exercises
A pricing bench that builds an offering backwards from its floor and holds the
line when a buyer pushes back
A social budget that starts from the three numbers your life costs
exercises across the five classes — 24 of them in
the money week alone
For the weeks in between
Rooms with people in them
Make & Do — Mon-Thu, 9:00 Pacific. You show up with
the thing you are stuck on and leave having moved it.
The standups, every week, on both tiers — the reason this is not a
subscription to watching alone
Live hours in every class, with the person teaching it in the room with you —
that is what the $500 tier adds, and you can
come back to a studio day you liked every time it runs
22.4 recorded hours of
Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI to rewatch
at 2am when a draft will not behave, and every recording after them
The idea the intensive is built on
Stories are made of five shapes.
Branch, gate, loop, braid, hub. Every interactive story you have played is those five
composed in some order. Assemble one below and watch the arithmetic: passages you have to
write against playthroughs you get back, and the moment where you stop tracking paths and
start tracking what your reader has already done.
The story-shape composer
Click a shape to add it to the end of the structure. Click a piece in the strip to remove it.
Stack up to eight — further than any first story goes — and watch what each one buys you.
Start, then a two-way branch that reconverges, a gate on a decision you recorded earlier
and a loop you may re-enter up to three times, then the end.
11passages you have to write
16distinct playthroughs it yields
2state variables you have to track
1.5playthroughs per passage written
Every shape here is on the syllabus of The Interactive Fiction Intensive, along
with the two capabilities this is really about — transform a linear story into chained
diamonds and operate state so a branching story neither explodes nor rails. The
shape catalogue and the composition guide come with the day.
Two doors down the hall
Two people belong on a different path — and both of them are here.
This path is for the person who wants the work to be theirs at the end of it — your voice, your
structure, your price — with the model doing the parts that were never the point. If that is
the sentence you have been trying to say out loud, you are on the right page.
Come and make something.
The room that carries the weeks in between is Make & Do, Mon-Thu at 9:00 Pacific.
The rest of the dates are further up this page. Take the recordings and you get every one
of those days the week after it happens, plus the standups to bring the work to; take the
live tier and you are at the bench on the day. Either way you leave with work, not notes: a
playable story on a public shelf, a campaign you can defend under hostile reading, and a
price you can say out loud.
$250 a month opens 22.4 recorded hours,
Exercises, tools and the standups every week.
$500 a month adds the room while it runs. Both
renew monthly and you cancel either one yourself. Anything you finish stays yours.