First Threads

You leave with a business named, skills built from your own material, a one-pager you'd defend to a stranger, and a first article drafted. One folder, and the next three sessions read every file in it.

Five-minute setup

Do this before the session starts, or in the first ten minutes while the framing happens. Nothing here is required to attend.

1. Have an agent installed

   Claude Code, the Codex extension, or whatever you already run. Every skill file below is plain markdown with frontmatter — it works in anything that reads a skills directory.

2. Get the skills

   Download this session's bundle and unzip it at the root of your project. It writes into .claude/skills/ and nothing else.

   unzip -o day-zero-01-first-threads.zip -d .

3. Point it at a real product

   An idea in a notes app counts. The skills read your repo, your site and your README before asking you anything, so run them from inside the project rather than a blank folder.

4. Make somewhere to put the output

   The skills write markdown and don't care where it lands. One folder per session — 01-voice/ through 04-agents/ — at the root of your project. Make tonight's before you start rather than mid-run.

The steps

1. 01

   Name the business

   One, and it's the one you carry through all four sessions. Something you'd actually like customers for beats a demo project — the work only compounds if the thing is real. An idea with no code yet counts.

   Done looks like: One sentence: what it is and who it's for. Written down, not held in your head.

2. 02

   Teach it the thing you keep re-explaining

   /skill-writer

   Whatever you typed twice this week — the same context paragraph, the same format request, the same correction. It asks for real examples rather than adjectives, writes the steps as instructions, names the file it reads and the file it writes, then tests the result in a fresh thread.

   Done looks like: A skill file on disk, in .claude/skills/ and copied into 01-voice/skills/, that a blank thread runs without you re-explaining anything.

3. 03

   Build the voice skill from real writing

   /brand-voice

   Feed it three things you actually wrote — emails, a post, a page. Not adjectives. It comes back with do/don't pairs quoted from your own sentences, plus the tell-check: the constructions that mark a draft as machine-written for you specifically.

   Done looks like: A fresh thread, given the skill and the samples folder, writes something that sounds like you rather than like a brand.

4. 04

   Write down who pays

   /icp-profile

   Who pays, the trigger that makes this urgent now instead of someday, and the disqualifier. The disqualifier is the one everybody skips, and it's the one that makes every later draft specific.

   Done looks like: You can name a real company that fits and a real company that obviously doesn't.

5. 05

   Compress it to one page

   /positioning-brief

   It reads the voice skill and the ICP first, then writes the one-liner: for [who] who [problem], [product] is a [category] that [outcome]. Then the swap test — put a competitor's name in it.

   Done looks like: It fails the swap test. If a competitor's name reads true in your one-liner, it's a description, not positioning.

6. 06

   Draft the first article

   /article-draft

   One piece, in your voice, from the one-pager. Go through it and mark every claim and number as verified or unverified. That pass is the whole difference between a draft and something you can publish.

   Done looks like: Every claim is marked, and you know which two you have to go and check tomorrow.

7. 07

   File all of it in 01-voice/

   One folder, committed, all of it. Session 02 reads the ICP to build the calendar, session 03 turns the one-pager into the hero of your site, session 04 hands the voice skill to the drafting workflow. A chat you closed can't do any of that.

   Done looks like: It's on disk and pushed. If it only exists in a scrollback, you'll rebuild it next week.

What you leave with

01-voice/ — skills/brand-voice/ and skills/icp-profile/ built from your own material and mirrored into .claude/skills/ where the agent reads them, positioning.md with the one-liner, and article-01.md with every claim marked.

If you get stuck

If the voice skill sounds generic, you fed it adjectives instead of writing. Go get three real emails you've sent and run it again — it can only sound like you if it's read you.

Or ask in Discord — mentors and everyone else's work in progress are there between sessions.