Lab Activity 1: Blueprinting Your Automation Pipeline

Section 1: The Vibe Coding Mindset & Blueprinting

🎯 Objective

Identify a manual, repetitive process in your business and translate it into a structured, step-by-step automation map (input, processing, output).

⏱️ Time Allocation

• Individual Work: 15 minutes
• Review & Whiteboard Discussion: 10 minutes

🛠️ Materials Required

• Pen and paper or digital whiteboard (e.g., Miro, Excalidraw).
• Participant Handbook (Lab 1 Worksheet).

📋 Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Identify the Bottleneck: Focus on a single, high-frequency manual task in your daily business. Examples:

• "Downloading video testimonials and posting them to my website."
• "Generating blog posts from weekly newsletters."
• "Renaming raw audio files and uploading them to a shared drive."

1. Define the Inputs and Outputs:

• What triggers this process? (e.g., A new file in a folder, a new email, a row in a spreadsheet).
• What is the final success state? (e.g., A published post on social media, a formatted report sent to a client).

1. Map the Intermediate Steps: Break down the process into 3-4 simple logical transitions. Example:

• Step A: Monitor folder for new .mp4 file.
• Step B: Extract audio and send it to an LLM to generate a subtitle transcript.
• Step C: Use a Python script to add a watermark.
• Step D: Send the final file and transcript to the Buffer scheduling webhook.

1. Draft Your Diagram: Sketch this flow on your worksheet.

🗣️ Debrief Questions

• How many manual steps can be completely eliminated by this pipeline?
• What are the potential fail-points in this workflow (e.g., missing inputs, API downtime)?