Build a site
Let’s start with a simple act: have your agent build you a website.
Topic is up to you. Maybe it’s a personal site, introducing yourself to the internet. Or if the weight of that much identity is too much, go retro: the dawn of the internet saw countless fan sites, as people shared their passion for music, television, video games—whatever struck their creative fancy. Nothing wrong with building a fan site.
If that doesn’t inspire, make a website for a business that doesn’t exist, a business that does exist, or an organization you wish existed.
Or some other site.
What matters is to get your imagination going. Think about what you want your site to communicate. What information does an interested visitor need? How will you establish credibility? What stories or proof points should you share?
Planning
Here are a few things worth planning:
- Title and headlines: announce the purpose of your site
- Introduction: what do you want to say?
- Sections or subpages: how will you expand in greater detail?
Take ten minutes and write these down on a blank page. If you’re visually inclined, feel free to sketch the layout that you want, think about typography, choose colors. If you’re not at all inclined in those ways, don’t worry about it.
Whatever form it takes, having a clear picture of the website you want to see will help immensely.
Creation
Create a folder on your computer. Name it “my-great-website.” Or anything else you prefer.
Fire up your agent, pointing it at that folder (or, if you’re using a CLI, starting it from that folder).
From here, it’s time to explain to your agent what you want. To wit:
- You’re building a website
- You’d like it to include the content you planned
- Any other details you’d like to share
Newer agents can actually interpret images, so if you made any sketches, you can take a photo and show that to the agent as well.
It’s also helpful to explain to the agent your sense of proficiency with this exercise. If you’re a beginner with agent work, you can say so, and this will affect how the agent explains what it’s doing and even what choices it makes in architecting your site.
From this initial brief, the agent will go to work building your site. It’s okay if your planned content is half-written, full of placeholders, or otherwise incomplete. You can iterate with your agent from here.
Iteration
After some time planning, editing and scaffolding, your agent should have something to show you.
It probably won’t be exactly what you had in mind.
That’s okay! Give it feedback. As specific and detailed as you can, at first, about what needs to change for you to be happy. It will tweak and edit, and you can continue giving feedback.
You can also give the agent feedback about vibes. Maybe you want more serious, less jaunty. More bright, less plain. Talk through these preferences with the agent. See what it comes up with.
Publish, if you like
From here, it’s time to publish.
Really! You can get your site working on the public internet, if you want to. If you have strong opinions about how you’d like to do this, express them to your agent.
If not, Cloudflare is very easy for agents to use and can have your site online in seconds. Just sign up for an account and tell your agent that’s how you want to fly.
Reflection
Now let’s think through what happened here. Take some time to write your responses to these questions.
What was surprising or frustrating about how the agent executed your vision? Were things not quite what you’d imagined? Did it take liberties you’d prefer it wouldn’t? Was the website good enough to share? Why or why not?
What files did the agent create? Do they make sense to you? Review what was built and make note of things you don’t understand. Weird symbols and syntax, files, anything that’s not obvious is worth noting here.
What did the agent do that confused you, if anything? Any specific shortcuts or maneuvers you couldn’t quite follow?
Now, share these reflections with the agent, a piece at a time. There may be additional context it can provide to help you understand what’s up.