You are
the bottleneck.
There are 20 people on April 17. Only three of them can build — you. That makes you the technical lead, the demo operator, the Kickoff Ritual narrator, the cut-list authority, and the team's quietest voice during the actual sprints. The pre-flight below exists to make sure you walk in fully loaded so the team can lean on you without waiting on you.
Eight items. Each one prevents a specific failure on the day. None are optional.
- 01
Claude Code installed and updated
Latest version. API authenticated. Plugins and skills loaded and tested. The first time the day reveals a stale install is the wrong time.
- 02
Token / credit headroom verified
Your Anthropic plan has enough capacity for 3+ hours of heavy multi-Builder usage. Check the dashboard. If you're on the edge, top up — running out of tokens at 2:15 PM on April 17 is the worst possible failure mode.
- 03
Deploy target chosen and pre-deployed
Once you know which spec your team is building, pick a deploy target appropriate to the customer profile. Vercel for SaaS-buyer specs. Docker Compose for behind-the-firewall specs (Compass-style). Cloudflare Tunnel for hybrid. Then pre-deploy a hello-world to verify the pipeline works end to end. The deploy command should produce a public URL or a running stack in under 60 seconds. The first time you discover your CLI isn't authenticated is the wrong time.
- 04
Spec pre-read the night before
Read the full spec end to end. Identify your MVP slice (the smallest thing you'd be willing to demo at 4:00 PM if everything else broke). Write your cut list: "if I have 45 min left and X isn't working, I drop Y, then Z, then W in this order." The cut list is the most important thing you bring on the day.
- 05
Top two failure modes rehearsed
What happens if the API rate-limits? (Switch to Haiku for 30 min.) What happens if the deploy breaks? (Fall back to localhost demo.) Two scenarios, two pre-decided responses. You're not improvising under pressure on the day.
- 06
Familiar with the load-bearing skills
brainstorming, frontend-design, writing-plans, verification-before-completion. You don't need to memorize them — you need to know which one to invoke when.
- 07
Builder Sync meeting attended
The 25-minute sync with Anuj, Will, Camellia. Builder expectations aligned. Office-hours protocol agreed. Cross-team Slack/Teams lifeline channel established. Shared starter-kit decisions made. If you missed it, catch up before April 17.
- 08
Recording mechanism for your team picked and tested
Otter, Fireflies, Teams/Zoom recording, phone with transcription — pick one. Test it. The Discovery hour, both build sprints, and the Wrap all need to be captured. Without a working recording, you're throwing away the most context-dense work the day produces.
Mindset, not tasks. The four things that should already be true between your ears when you walk in on April 17.
You are not the team's only voice — you are the team's quietest one.
Heads down during build sprints. Office hours when other teams need help. The team's decisions are made by the Product Owner, not by you. Trust the PO to absorb scope ambiguity so you can stay in flow.
Cut, don't perfect.
The MVP slice is the win condition, not the stretch goal. The polish phase is for the Narrator, not for you. If something is at 80% at 3:00 PM, it's done.
Demo cold at the Walk-Around.
12:30 PM you stand at your station and show what you have, even if it's ugly. Honesty over polish. The Walk-Around is muscle memory for the live demo — practice it like one.
The Kickoff Ritual is the room's most important 30 minutes.
You're projecting your screen at 9:45 with the other two Builders. Narrate the choices, not the keystrokes. The 17 non-Builders are about to see a cold Claude Code project come to life — that's the moment the firm changes how it thinks about what's possible.
Every working session on April 17 is recorded — Discovery, both build sprints, the Walk-Around, the Wrap. Your team's recording mechanism is the one you set up in step 8 of the checklist above. By attending Build Day you're acknowledging this and consenting to it. Transcripts become first-class context for the firm's LLM tooling and live in the central transcript store post-day.