The genie is not at Disneyland
On holiday in Tokyo I went to find the genie. I told him I need a website, a CRM and a newsletter. Nothing happened. The genie that builds things is not in a theme park, and not in a chatbox either. It is on your computer.
- Where
- In the web chat
- Size
- A quick one
- Short link
- piy.show/s121
A holiday, a genie, and a list
Tokyo DisneySea, the 25th anniversary, and the genie from Aladdin on his float. I had my list ready. A newsletter, a website, a CRM. I need everything. I told him. I told the plush genie in the shop too. I prompted him, and nothing happened.
My family found this very funny. So did I, because it is the same scene I see every week. People tell a chat what they need and wait for it to appear.
This series of Shorts is the joke, told three times, with the real answer at the end of each one. The genie has to be in your computer, so it knows what to do.
Why did the genie not build anything? Prompt it yourself
I want a website, a CRM and a newsletter for my small business. Before you build anything, tell me what you can do from this chat, and what you cannot.
A genie in a chatbox cannot touch your files
A chat in your browser answers questions. It can write you a plan, a page of text, a piece of code. It cannot open your folder, run anything, save anything, or come back tomorrow knowing where it left off. Every time you paste, you are the hands.
That is why the list fails. A website, a CRM and a newsletter are not answers. They are things that have to exist on a computer, in files, running, connected to your accounts. Asking a chat for them is asking a genie on a float.
The agent on your computer is the same intelligence with hands. It reads your files, writes them, runs the thing, checks that it works and fixes what it broke. Ask the chat for a plan. Ask the agent for the thing.
What can a chat not do that an agent can? Prompt it yourself
Here is my plan from the chat. You are on my computer now. Make the folder, build the first version, run it, and tell me what you did.
What you end up with when it is in the box
Once the agent is on your machine, one word starts it from any folder. A bar at the bottom shows which model it uses, which folder it is in, and how full its memory is, so a slow and forgetful agent is a number you can see.
You get a page of your own on your computer with how all of this works, and under it every page the agent writes for you. A folder per project, with a place to drop things in. Your keys kept encrypted, so a key never goes through the chat. And a handful of things you can ask for by name: an idea researched and built as a first version, a project started, your work saved, a second opinion.
Everything else you ask in plain words. There is no menu on purpose. A thing you do once a year is a thing the agent does for you.
What does the agent set up on my computer? Prompt it yourself
Show me what you can do on this computer. Which folder are we in, what is saved, and what should I ask you for first?
I can help you build yours
I build things like this with an AI agent, on my own computer. In a private session I help you do the same with your idea. Or bring it to the show, free.
It takes two prompts and one question
Getting it there is two prompts you paste and one question you answer, Mac or Windows. About an hour, with a coffee in it. The walk-through is on this site under Put the genie in the box, in the kit's own words.
You do not need to be any good at this. That is the whole point of the kit. It is written for somebody who has never opened a terminal, and it tells you what is about to happen before it happens.
Part two of this series is the install itself. Part three is what to do the first morning after.
How do I do this step myself? Prompt it yourself
I have never used a terminal. Walk me through getting Claude Code onto my computer, one step at a time, and wait for me to say a step worked before you start the next one.
Start with your own list
Write your list. The website, the CRM, the newsletter, whatever it is. Then put the genie in the box first, and give it the list on your own computer. The list is the same. The hands are new.
What do I do next? Prompt it yourself
Here is my list of things I need for my business. Put them in order, and start with the one that is the smallest and proves the most.
Prompty