Phase 6

🤖 The AI Moment

~10 min Step 7 of 9

Now let's try something.

Open Claude Code (or whatever AI coding tool you're using) and ask it to add a feature to your site. Some ideas:

A dark mode toggle
A "projects" page with a grid of cards
An animated countdown on the launch button
A theme color picker

Let Claude generate the code. Then, before you paste it in, read it together, line by line.

Ask yourselves

Can we explain what every line does?
Does it use any Svelte features we haven't seen before?
Does the structure match what we've been doing?

If you can explain it all — great. AI just saved you time, and you learned from seeing a different approach. Paste it in, test it, and ship it.

If there are parts you can't explain — that's the AI undertow. You just felt it tug. That's not a failure. It's a signal. It means there's something to learn before you let AI write that piece for you.

"This is the most important skill we're building: knowing when AI is helping you move faster, and when it's moving you into water you can't swim in."

The rule

If you can't explain it, don't ship it. Go learn the concept, then come back. Or simplify the request — ask AI for something you almost know how to do, so the generated code teaches you the last piece instead of the whole thing.

👋 Parent note

This is the core of the Glitch Academy approach. AI is a collaborator, not a replacement for understanding. The goal isn't to avoid AI — it's to use it from a position of knowledge. If your kid can read AI-generated Svelte code and say "I get it, this makes sense," they're in a strong position. If they can't, that's where the learning happens next.