A talk for competent adults
Your Computer Can
Do That Now
Five rungs. Real demonstrations. The price tag printed on every label.
handsinjars.com
"You're not behind because you're incapable.
The interface to computers changed in the last three years —
and nobody sent a memo."
What this is
The next iteration of software engineering:
product makers, not programmers.
Not a coding class. Not a hype talk. Leveraging technology to build —
and to get your time back.
1 · ASK
2 · RESEARCH
3 · DELEGATE
4 · AUTOMATE
5 · BUILD
The ladder
Five rungs, in order of trust. Every rung tonight gets a real
demonstration from systems I actually use — and its price tag.
Rung 1 — Ask
It's a thinking partner,
not a search box.
This rung is for you if you've ever signed something you didn't fully
understand.
DEMO
Rung 1 · The confusing letter
The price tag
Hallucination
- It will sometimes state wrong things with total confidence. Not often. Not never.
- Verify anything that has a name, a number, or a dollar sign attached before you act on it.
- Use it to understand faster; keep deciding from the primary document.
How I decided: I treat it like a brilliant intern — it drafts
everything, it signs nothing.
Rung 2 — Research
It reads the pile
so you don't have to.
This rung is for you if there's a stack of reading you're pretending
you'll get to.
DEMO
Rung 2 · The pile of PDFs
The price tag
Your documents go to a cloud
- Uploading a document means a copy leaves your control. For public PDFs, that costs nothing.
- For private documents, know what you're trading — decide by category, not document-by-document.
- Never upload other people's private information to a convenience tool.
How I decided: public or low-stakes goes to the cloud; family and
finances stay home — and "home" is a real option.
Rung 3 — Delegate
It can act
on your behalf.
This rung is for you if you answer the same message more than three times
a week.
DEMO
Rung 3 · The shelf agent
The price tag — the big one
An agent with your inbox
- An agent that can read your mail can read all of your mail. Grant access
like you'd hand someone your house key.
- Start drafts-only. Auto-send is a decision you make months later, or never.
- Give the agent its own account with narrow access — not the keys to your main identity.
- Deciding "never" is a competent decision, not a timid one.
How I decided: separate account; it drafts, I send; and a written
list of things it will never touch — money, passwords, anything about my family.
Rung 4 — Automate
It can run
without you.
This rung is for you if part of your job happens on a calendar, not by
choice.
DEMO
Rung 4 · The 6 a.m. job
The price tag
Confidently wrong
- Automation doesn't fail loudly. It fails politely, on schedule, with perfect formatting.
- The work doesn't disappear — it changes shape: from doing the task to checking the task.
- Decide your checking regime before you trust the output — and never let anything
publish itself without a human gate.
How I decided: every automated job I run ends in a report a human
reads. Nothing sends, posts, or files anything on its own.
Rung 5 — Build
You can make
software now.
This rung is for you if you've said "somebody should make an app for
that" this year.
DEMO
Rung 5 · The room's website
The price tag
Cost & maintenance
- This is the rung that costs real money: subscriptions and usage add up if you build often.
- Software you build is software you own. It will break someday — and the person on
call is you.
- The model can't tell you what to build or why. Noticing the real
problem is still entirely human — and it's a learnable skill.
How I decided: I build small, I build for us first, and I never
build what I can't afford to maintain.
The thread you kept hearing
The local option:
private by physics, not by policy.
Modern open models run well on a consumer graphics card — the gaming PC in
half the houses in this town. Your documents can't leak from a cloud they never went to.
More work, still a hobby — and my default for anything about family or money.
Worksheet — on the back of your handout
"What did you do this week that felt
slower than it should be?"
Write down three answers. Every answer lives on a rung.
Monday morning — one action per rung
- Ask — Take the next confusing document that lands on you — a bill, a form, a
policy letter — and ask an AI to explain it in plain English and lay out your options
before you act.
- Research — Pick the pile of reading you've been avoiding, load it into a
research notebook, and ask for a briefing you can read in five minutes.
- Delegate — Write down the three messages you answer over and over — that
list is the job description for your first agent. Don't connect anything yet; just
write the list.
- Automate — Name one chore you do on a schedule — a report, a status check, a
roundup — and write down exactly how you'd check a machine's work if it did it for you.
- Build — Describe one small tool you wish existed — one paragraph, no code
words — and bring it to a workshop or hand it to an AI and see how far it gets.
If Rung 5 is your rung
The Small Batch Software workshop — $75
A working session on the one skill the model can't do for you: extracting
a buildable spec from your own problem. Details at
handsinjars.com.
There's a second talk
Tonight was the ladder.
Next time is flying lessons:
how to make all of this compound.
Thank you.
Everything shown tonight, and the list for the next talk:
handsinjars.com
Questions —
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