🥘 The course
Learn to cook with an agent
Build a meal planner from your voice, then hire a brigade of Grok Bots to run it and improve it.
- 1 Specify the work
- 2 Let the agent verify
- 3 Set the effort
Next workshop: Saturday 28 November 2026, Haberfield Library, Dalhousie St
Before you arrive · Module 1
Mise en place: set up before you arrive
Read the house recipe (specify, verify, effort), install Grok Bot, Cursor and Node.js, open the two accounts your app will need (somewhere to serve it and somewhere to keep the recipe book), then get your Cloudflare keys.
Chefs don't start chopping when the first order lands. They lay out the bench first. Twenty minutes at home saves an hour of fiddling on the day.
- 1 The house recipe: specify, verify, effort Know the three steps by heart, and use them once on a real request before the workshop.
- 2 Install Grok Bot, Cursor and Node.js Arrive with Grok Bot on your phone and computer, Cursor and Node.js 24 on your computer, each tool signed in and answering one hello.
- 3 A dining room and a recipe book A free Cloudflare account and a free GitHub account, both tested, so the morning is spent cooking rather than filling in sign‑up forms.
- 4 Get your Cloudflare keys Your Account ID copied, and a Cloudflare API token made from the Edit Cloudflare Workers template, saved in your password manager, ready to paste into a masked secret field.
Morning · Module 2
Morning: from your voice to a tasting plate
Talk through the app you want, out loud, then have an agent plate up a quick single‑file HTML prototype you can click around and critique.
A tasting plate before the banquet. Cheap to make, quick to taste, easy to throw away and try again.
Morning · Module 3
Morning: cook it properly with the starter kit
Meet the starter kit, turn the prototype into a real meal planner (household, meal plan, shopping list, reminders), serve it on the internet using git and Cloudflare, then lock the door so only you get in.
The prototype told us what the dish should taste like. The starter kit is the commercial kitchen we cook it in: proper benches, a cool room and a pass where every plate gets checked.
- 7 Meet the starter kit Get the starter kit running on your computer, take a plain‑English tour, and explain its four big ideas to the person next to you.
- 8 Cook the meal planner, one station at a time A meal planner running on your computer with your household, a week of meals, a shopping list built from the plan, and at least one reminder.
- 9 Open the doors Your meal planner live at a real web address, opened on your own phone, with the code saved in your GitHub account and the bots' order hatch open.
- 10 Lock the door Your app asks strangers to sign in and only lets your email through with a one‑time PIN, while Grok Bot can still reach the order hatch (/mcp) with the kitchen key.
Afternoon · Module 4
Afternoon: hire your brigade of Grok Bots
Set up Grok Bots that can work your app for you: one finds recipes and files them in your planner, another builds the weekly Woolies shop.
A brigade is a kitchen team where everyone has one station. The recipe bot is on research, the shopping bot is on stores, and you're the head chef calling the orders.
- 11 Hire your first bot A Grok Bot that tells you what's on this week's meal plan, then adds one meal you ask for, by talking to your live app.
- 12 The recipe finder bot A recipe bot that finds three recipes that fit your household, explains any it rejected, and files the keepers in your app with their source links.
- 13 The weekly shop bot A shopping bot that turns this week's list into a Woolies trolley, then stops and reports what it added, swapped and couldn't find.
Afternoon · Module 5
Afternoon: routines, email and a shared kitchen
Put your bots on standing orders, give one an email address, and share the kitchen with your partner or housemates so the website becomes the household's hub.
Good kitchens run on standing orders and a shared docket rail, not on the head chef remembering everything.
- 14 Standing orders At least one bot on a routine, with a test run done today so you know exactly what it'll do when it runs for real.
- 15 Give your bot an email address Find your bot's email address, forward it one recipe or note, see it land in your app, and approve a draft reply.
- 16 A shared kitchen Two people (or a person and a bot) changing the meal plan at once, each seeing the other's changes appear live.
Afternoon · Module 6
Afternoon: let your Grok Bot improve the app
Notice something the app should do, ask your Grok Bot to have a cloud agent cook it up, then taste test the change before it goes on the menu.
You've stopped cooking every dish yourself. Now you write the special on the board, the brigade cooks it, and you taste it at the pass.
- 17 Write the special on the board Order one small new feature from your Grok Bot in plain English, and get back a proposed change (a pull request) built by a cloud agent, ready to try.
- 18 Taste at the pass, then put it on the menu Review one pull request, try its preview, merge it, refresh your live app and use the new feature, all without opening a code file.
Extras · Module 7
Extras: voice, pictures and taking it home
Optional courses for fast finishers: talk to your app, find and make pictures for it, and plan what you'll keep cooking after the workshop.
Dessert is optional, but it's usually what people remember.
- 19 Talk to your kitchen Pick one voice job, try it with your Grok Bot first, and only if you need to, order a small "speak to add" feature for your app.
- 20 Find good pictures for your recipes A bot finds a suitable picture for three recipes, records where each came from and its licence, and adds them to your app with a credit.
- 21 Paint your own menu Write a style recipe, generate a hero picture for your site and one for a recipe, check they match, and add them to your app.
- 22 Take it home Leave with a working site, at least one bot on a routine, three small orders ready for next week, and a weekly habit to keep improving.