Week 2 · Setup Day

Today is about one shift: going AI-native. AI isn't just for writing code. It helps you think through an idea, search for what's been done, organize what you find, and build the real thing — and you do it all in plain language. Increasingly, you just talk.

Everything you make this way leaves a trail — a version from the AI, a version from you, draft after draft. GitHub is where all of it lives. That's why we end today by setting one up.

Every step below is a prompt you can copy — drop it straight into Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex. Keep this page open all class. Stuck on setup? Mia, our code assistant, is here for exactly that.

01 · Icebreaker

Before any keyboards — a quick game to warm up the room. Everyone shares one number.

02 · What good looks like

Here's last year's bar. A student named Jenny built "Designing Inclusive Fashion Tools" — a generative-AI tool that lets non-expert creators turn a character idea into a fashion design, by writing the hard image-prompts for them. Fill in a simple form (style, materials, colors…) → it generates a good prompt → Stable Diffusion makes the design.

Notice: it wasn't a game — it was a tool, for a real, overlooked group. That's completely fair. Your thing can be a game, a website, or a tool — as long as it helps real people and you study how they use it.

03 · Talk, don't type

AI-native means you work in natural language — and the fastest natural language is your voice. You already have the best tool: WeChat. Turn on its voice input and dictate your prompts instead of typing them.

Try it right now: hold Fn (or Ctrl + Win) and dictate into your AI tool — "introduce yourself and tell me what you can help me build today."

04 · Set up your AI tool

05 · Brainstorm with AI

First, how to actually talk to AI so it's useful:

Now don't brainstorm alone — make the AI argue with you. Your idea can be a small game or an interactive website; the one rule is that it should collect the most user feedback you can get, because that feedback becomes the evidence in your paper.

我是「AI for Social Sciences」课程的高中生。我想做一个关于我在意的某个社会议题的小项目:[在这里描述你的议题]。

请当我的头脑风暴搭子,并质疑我的想法。帮我决定:
1. 这该做成一个小游戏,还是一个交互式网站?
2. 这周我能搭出来并上线的最小版本是什么?
3. 它怎么才能从真实用户那里收集到最有用的反馈?
4. 这些反馈怎么变成论文里的证据?

回答前先反问我几个问题。挑我想法里薄弱的地方挑战我。

06 · Talk it out — small groups

We're nine. Split into three groups of three. Ideas get sharp when you say them out loud to people who aren't your AI.

07 · Frame it as research

You're not just making something cool. This is social science: your project is an instrument for finding something out about people. Keep this arc in mind from day one —

Paste this to turn your idea into a research-shaped plan — and to find what's already been studied:

Help me think about my project as social-science research, not just a build.

My issue / idea: [paste your idea here]

1. What's a sharp research question I could actually answer with this?
2. What topics, theories, or search terms should I read up on for this issue? Give me 3–5 real leads to look into.
3. What could I measure from how people use my game/site? (my data)
4. How do I build in feedback collection from the start, so I end up with real evidence for my paper?

Be concrete and push me toward something measurable.
Don't get fooled by AI. It sounds confident even when it's wrong, and it invents sources, names, and statistics. Treat anything it cites as a lead to verify yourself — open the real paper, check the real number. In research, the verifying is the work.

08 · Set up GitHub

Remember the trail? Everything you and the AI make — every draft, a version from each of you — needs a home where you can see every version. That home is GitHub. Here's what you'll set up:

Here's the AI-native move: you don't learn git. You hand the whole setup to your AI tool — it'll use the GitHub CLI (gh) and run it with you, step by step. Paste this. (Or just ask Mia.)

我从没用过 Git 或 GitHub。请你「带着我一起」做 —— 你出步骤,我在自己电脑上跟着操作。用 GitHub CLI(gh):

1. 帮我安装 gh 并登录我的 GitHub 账号
2. 新建一个名为 "my-idea" 的「公开」仓库
3. 把我的 index.html 加进去并 push

一步一步来,告诉我具体要敲什么,确认这步成了再下一步。报错就读报错、和我一起修。

09 · Your idea, as one HTML file

Your deliverable is a single index.html describing your preliminary idea, pushed to your repo. Why HTML, not Markdown? HTML is the most AI-native format there is — AI reads it best, every browser opens it, and it can grow straight into your real project. Paste this to draft it:

帮我做一个单文件、自包含的 index.html,介绍我的项目想法。涵盖:
- 这个社会议题,以及它是给谁的
- 它是一个小游戏还是一个交互式网站
- 它怎么收集用户反馈
- 这些反馈怎么支撑一篇研究论文

我的想法:[在这里粘贴你头脑风暴的结果]

保持干净简洁 —— 单栏、留白充足、系统字体、不用框架。我会在浏览器里打开它,然后 push 到 GitHub。

10 · Share + wrap up

11 · Before you go — class feedback

Two minutes, every class. Tell us what landed and what didn't — it directly shapes next week's class.