Day Zero sessions

Day zero is the day you actually start — not the day you meant to. Session one is where you pick the business. Everything across the next three nights gets built on it, so the first ten minutes are spent naming it out loud. Then the real work: what separates a thread that produces something from a thread that produces conversation, and how to turn the thing you keep re-explaining into a skill file you run with one word. Follow along on a laptop, or just watch.

Dates announced soon — evenings, 6:00 PM at Workuity Biltmore. Watch Discord and the Luma and Meetup calendars.

Or join the waitlist and the dates come to you.

Format: the host presents and builds live on screen. Bring a laptop and work along if you want to, or just watch — nobody is put on the spot or asked to present.

Why this session exists

The blank box is the whole problem. Nobody was ever taught what to put in it, so most first hours with these tools end in a paragraph that sounds fine and does nothing. A thread with a job — context, role, task, format, artifact — ends in a file you keep and reuse. That's the difference, and it's learnable in one evening.

What we cover

1. 01

   Pick the business

   Ten minutes, out loud: the thing you sell, or the thing you'd sell if it existed. Every artifact in the program points at this one, so pick the real one rather than the impressive one.

2. 02

   Anatomy of a thread that works

   Context, role, task, format, and the artifact it ends in. We take a vague ask and rebuild it live, one layer at a time, until the output is something you'd actually keep.

3. 03

   Chat as search vs chat as work

   Two windows side by side, same question. One gives you a paragraph you'll close and forget; the other gives you a file with your name on it. The input is the only difference.

4. 04

   Skills: teach it once

   A skill file is instructions you wrote down once so you stop repeating yourself every thread. What belongs in one, what doesn't, and how to check it works in a fresh thread with no context.

5. 05

   Your brand voice, built live

   From three real writing samples, never adjectives. "Friendly and professional" produces identical copy for you and your closest competitor. Your own sent emails don't.

6. 06

   Your ICP, built live

   Who pays, what makes it urgent this month, and who you'd turn down. Written as a skill rather than a document, so every draft after tonight reads it first.

7. 07

   The one-pager, then the first draft

   Voice plus ICP into a positioning one-pager, then one article drafted from it with every claim marked verified or not. Drafted tonight, published when the claims check out.

What to do afterward

Nothing is required. The program compounds if you run the same work on your own product; this is the suggested output for the session:

01-voice/ — if you want somewhere to put it: your brand-voice and ICP skill files, the positioning one-pager they produced, and the first article draft with its claims marked.

Everything is open source. Missed the session? It's archived in Discord.

The session kit

Slides, a follow-along guide and skill files, free and downloadable whether you make it to the room or not.

Install this session's skills

curl -fsSLO https://www.shipai.club/skills/day-zero-01-first-threads.zip
unzip -o day-zero-01-first-threads.zip -d .

What's in the bundle

• /skill-writerSKILL.md

  Turn something you keep re-explaining into a skill file you run with one word. Use the second time you type the same instructions.

• /brand-voiceSKILL.md

  Extract a voice skill from real writing samples so every draft sounds like the user instead of a model. Use before generating any copy.

• /icp-profileSKILL.md

  Write down who pays, what makes it urgent, and who to turn away — as a skill every later draft reads first. Use before writing any copy.

• /positioning-briefSKILL.md

  Work out who it's for, what it replaces, and the one thing only you can claim. Use whenever the value prop is fuzzy.

• /article-draftSKILL.md

  Draft one article from the content map worth publishing under your own name. Use when the map names an unwritten page.

Every skill from the program is on the skills page.