📅
EXAMPLE IDEA
Study Scheduler
An app that turns a syllabus into a week-by-week study plan and reminds you before it's too late to start.
grades 10–12 · teams of 2–4 · no coding experience required
Build real apps.
Think like a founder.
AI Creator Lab is a 28-hour, hands-on program where high schoolers take an idea from a blank page to a live, deployed web app — using the same AI-assisted development workflow modern startups use. Teams write a PRD, design in Figma, build with Claude Code, and ship it for real at Demo Day.
Rolling admission · 12–24 students per cohort · after-school or summer intensive
actual student workflow
your app, live on the internet
28 hours, 4 phases, idea to launch
/
Teams of 2–4, instructor ratio ~1:8–10
/
Every student deploys a live app on their own GitHub + Render
/
No prior coding experience required
what your team will build
You pick the problem. We teach you how to ship it.
In Phase 3, every team defines its own problem, target user, and PRD — there's no fixed project list. Here's the kind of app teams have shaped a build around, just to get you thinking.
🛒
EXAMPLE IDEA
Campus Marketplace
A simple buy/sell/trade board for a school community — list an item, message a buyer, mark it sold.
🙋
EXAMPLE IDEA
Volunteer Finder
Matches students to local volunteering opportunities by interest, location, and hours needed.
🏆
EXAMPLE IDEA
Team Manager
Tracks rosters, practice schedules, and stats for a club or intramural sports team.
🌱
EXAMPLE IDEA
Sustainability Tracker
Logs a household's habits and nudges small, specific changes instead of vague advice.
💬
EXAMPLE IDEA
Check-In Board
A lightweight way for a club or class to share how they're doing each week and flag who needs support.
how the 28 hours break down
Four phases, start to Demo Day.
Delivered as 8–10 sessions of 2.5–3 hours over 6–8 weeks, or as a condensed 4–5 day summer intensive. Instructors circulate the room the whole time — no student ends a session with a broken build.
Hrs
1–6
1–6
Phase 1 · Foundations
AI-Assisted Coding & Prompting
Get comfortable with the tools and learn to prompt effectively before writing a single line of code.
- Hr 1 Welcome & the founder mindset
- Hr 2 How AI coding tools actually work
- Hr 3 Setting up Claude, Claude Code & VS Code
- Hr 4–5 Prompting effectively, chain-of-thought & spec-driven prompts
- Hr 6 Practice lab: extend a starter project
Hrs
7–14
7–14
Phase 2 · Git, GitHub, Deployment & Design
Ship a live URL, then design the real thing
Version control by hand before automating it, a first deployment, and the UI/UX + Figma skills to design your app.
- Hr 7–8 GitHub concepts & Git by hand
- Hr 9–10 First deployment & troubleshooting on Render
- Hr 11 UI/UX foundations
- Hr 12 Figma basics: build a wireframe
- Hr 13–14 From design to code: generate your design-system.md
Hrs
15–20
15–20
Phase 3 · Product Thinking
Write the PRD that defines what you're building
Define a real problem and user, then turn it into a personal Product Requirements Document and a scoped set of features.
- Hr 15 Problem statement & target customer (team)
- Hr 16 User persona & value proposition (team)
- Hr 17 Writing your PRD (individual)
- Hr 18 User stories & feature prioritization
- Hr 19 Wireframe refinement
- Hr 20 PRD & design peer review
Hrs
21–28
21–28
Phase 4 · Build, Test & Demo Day
Full-stack build, database, and a live pitch
Frontend, backend, a real database, QA on the deployed app, and a 5-minute demo in front of a real audience.
- Hr 21–22 Full-stack build: frontend, then backend
- Hr 23 Connect frontend & backend, redeploy
- Hr 24–25 Database concepts & integration
- Hr 26 Testing & bug fixing (QA)
- Hr 27 Portfolio polish: README & GitHub profile
- Hr 28 Demo Day: 5-min demo + Q&A + reflection
who's supporting you
Small teams, real instructor time.
We keep the instructor-to-student ratio around 1:8–10 so there's always someone free to help you debug, not just lecture. (Sample mentor roles below — swap in your actual instructor bios before publishing.)
MR
Lead Instructor
Full-stack mentor · Claude Code workflow
Guides teams through prompting, Git, and deployment — the backbone of Phases 1 and 2.
DK
Design Mentor
UI/UX & Figma
Helps teams turn a rough idea into a wireframe, then a real design-system.md Claude Code can build from.
AO
Product Coach
PRD & Demo Day prep
Runs the Phase 3 product-thinking sessions and coaches every team on presenting clearly at Demo Day.
from past cohorts
Students say the debugging was the actual lesson.
"I didn't know what a pull request was in week one. By Demo Day I'd pushed twelve of them."
11th grade, team of 3
"Writing the PRD forced me to actually explain my idea instead of just building whatever felt fun."
10th grade
"Demo Day was the first time I pitched something to adults who weren't my parents or teachers. That felt like a bigger deal than the app itself."
12th grade
next cohort · rolling admission
Apply for AI Creator Lab
Open to rising 10th–12th graders. No prior technical assessment required — just a short application and a couple sentences on why you want to join.
- 8–10 sessions of 2.5–3 hours over 6–8 weeks, or a 4–5 day summer intensive
- 12–24 students per cohort, teams of 2–4
- Instructor-to-student ratio of roughly 1:8–10
- Bring a laptop — GitHub, Render, Figma, and Claude accounts are set up in Hour 3
- Take-home: a personal PRD, a Figma design-system.md, a deployed live app, and a public GitHub repo
Register your interest
Takes about 2 minutes.
Prefer email? Reach us directly at hello@aicreatorlab.org.
questions
Before you apply
Do I need to know how to code?+
No. Phase 1 (Hours 1–6) assumes zero coding background and is built specifically around learning to direct an AI coding tool well — that's the actual skill the program teaches.
What tools or accounts do I need?+
A laptop, and free accounts for GitHub, Render, and Figma, plus access to Claude and Claude Code. We walk you through setting all of it up in Hour 3, so there's nothing to configure beforehand.
Do I need to arrive with a team?+
No. Teams of 2–4 are formed during Hour 1. If you already have teammates in mind, let us know on your application and we'll try to place you together.
What's the difference between the two formats?+
The after-school/weekend format runs 8–10 sessions of 2.5–3 hours over 6–8 weeks. The summer intensive covers the same 28 hours across 4–5 full days. Same curriculum, different pace.
Will this help with college applications?+
Every student finishes with a personal PRD, a Figma design system, a deployed live app on their own GitHub and Render accounts, and a polished README — a concrete project to point to in an essay or interview, not just a certificate.
What if I miss a session?+
Talk to your instructor as soon as you can — because teams build together across Phases 3 and 4, catching up quickly matters more here than in a self-paced course.