Side Quest

Everyone has a small annoyance they keep meaning to fix. The spreadsheet you rebuild every month, the thing you check by hand every morning, the tool that almost exists but not quite how you want it. Side Quest is the afternoon you finally build it.

The rules are simple. Start from nothing at 14:00. Prompt your way to something working by 17:30. The bar isn't impressive, it's useful: would you, or someone you know, actually open this next week? If yes, you've won.

Use whatever you like: Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Copilot, a local model, all of them at once. Write code or never touch it. This is as much about seeing how people actually prompt their way to a working thing as it is about the thing itself. Watching someone else's workflow is often worth more than any tutorial.

No idea? Pair up with someone who has too many. Not a coder? This is exactly the afternoon to find out how far prompting gets you. Some of the best builds will come from people who have never shipped anything.

At the end, everyone shows what they built. Two minutes, live, on screen. Show what worked, where the AI went sideways, and what you'd do differently. No judging panel, no winners that matter. Drop in for an hour or stay all four.