Education · Do this yourself

Generate a hands-on tutorial to learn a new technical topic yourself.

✅ Open source; 400+ points on HN.

Based on devenjarvis on Hacker News (opens in new tab)

Who it’s for

Teachers, students, tutors, coaches and anyone learning something new.

Adapt it to your industry

  • Coach: practice exercises and check-ins for your clients
  • Healthcare: simple explainers for patients (checked by a professional)
  • Shop: short how-to guides for your products

Step by step

  1. Write what you want to learn or teach, and the level (beginner, intermediate).
  2. Open ChatGPT, Claude or Grok and paste the prompt below.
  3. Ask for a 2-week plan with short daily lessons and a quiz at the end of each.
  4. Do one lesson and ask the AI to quiz you or your student; ask it to explain wrong answers.
  5. Check key facts against a trusted textbook or source.
  6. Save the best lessons in a document you can reuse.

Ready-to-copy prompt

/lathe build a tiny HTTP server in Rust, for someone who knows Python but not Rust.

Start with AI

Opens the AI with this guide and the prompt filled in.

Open in ChatGPT (opens in new tab)Open in Claude (opens in new tab)Open in Grok (opens in new tab)
Cost
$0–20/month (free tiers or one AI plan)Our estimate
Time
1–3 hoursOur estimate

How to make money from it

Pricing idea: Sell a short course or cohort (for example $50–500), or tutoring sessions that use the AI-made materials.

Finding your first 10 customers

  • Teach one free live session on the topic.
  • Share the free lesson materials publicly.
  • Invite attendees to a paid follow-up.

Ideas, not promises. Results vary.

Details: source, numbers and tags

What they did

Prompt “/lathe build a 3D slicer in Erlang”, then read it in a local web UI with side-notes, exercises and sources. Another model can check the code runs.

How it went

Open source; 400+ points on HN.

Worth knowing

This is the builder launching their own product on HN.

Difficulty
BeginnerOur rating
Time to build
Not reportedOur estimate
Monthly cost
Not reported
Revenue
Not reportedWe only show revenue the source states
Engagement
402 HN points72 comments · fetched Oct 15, 2026

Posted · Added Oct 16, 2026

Original builder recipe

  • Lathe
  • A coding agent
  1. Pick one concept to learn or teach.
  2. Have the agent build or explain it step by step.
  3. Test your understanding by changing parameters or asking why.
  4. Iterate.

Tags

Industry Education

Read the original

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