Twelve real projects across four academies. You ship a Skill, a tool, an agent, and a system that keeps your own taste honest. AI is in the loop the whole time — but the part only you can do is the part you do.
AI doesn't replace you — it amplifies whoever you already are. The same prompt becomes a different essay, a different agent, a different person, depending on which of these you've grown.
If you have it, AI takes you deeper into the thing you already love. Without it, AI hands you the average version of every essay ever written.
Read on passion →If you have it, AI helps you build for one specific human. Without it, AI helps you broadcast slop to everyone.
Read on empathy →If you have it, AI's first draft is the start. Without it, AI's first draft is the end — and it's almost never any good.
Read on taste →Each academy is three projects you actually ship. Difficulty climbs from project 1 to project 3. By the end of an academy, you have something a real person can use.
Turn a thing you obsess over into a Skill the family can actually use. Then evolve it, test it, and publish a version you'd put your name on.
Real HTML, CSS, JavaScript, real APIs, real tests. Not a sandbox — a tool that survives a week of being used by the person you built it for.
The empathetic academy. You design an agent for one specific person, give it permission tiers, and finally build one for someone genuinely vulnerable.
The deepest academy. Define what "good" means, build a judge that scores work against your rubric, and catch yourself drifting from your own taste.
If you already know Kindling (the original site, for ages 8–14), here's what's different.
This whole site grew out of one essay by Prof. Weining Zhang. It's a ten-minute read. If it doesn't change your mind about something — close the tab.
Read the essay →