Getting started: the skill installs its helpers and writes the plan

Type the slash, pick themariscal-create-amazing-website, and run it. You don't need to say anything else: the skill knows what to do.

It'll take longer for you than it does in the video. To keep the video watchable, I cut out the parts where ChatGPT sits there thinking. And it thinks a lot. That's normal.

Step 0: other people's skills

The first thing the skill does is check what you've got installed. To build a site properly we use skills from other people: for design, for animation, for auditing interfaces. There are several, each meant for a different moment in the process. You don't need to know which is which. The skill checks which ones you're missing, shows you the list, and installs them with your permission.

When it's done, it tells you everything's ready and moves on to step 1.

Step 1: telling it the idea

Now ChatGPT asks what your website is about. This is where you write. I put something like:

I want to build a website to sell sneakers. It's an e-commerce store.

The more you tell it, the better. If you already know which pages it'll have, say so. If you have a name, an audience, a tone of voice, say that too. With that information the skill builds two things:

• The plan. All nineteen steps, written out, in a folder inside the project. Before you work on anything with an AI you should have a plan and know what steps are coming. The skill brings its own; you don't have to write it.
• The Obsidian vault. The folder of linked notes where everything from here on gets recorded.

If you look inside the New Website folder you'll also see a file called AGENTS.md. It's an instruction file for the AI: it tells it how to behave in this project. We wrote it already. Don't touch it, but know it's there.

When step 1 finishes, ChatGPT says something like "the project was created successfully" and pushes the documentation to GitHub. If it's your first time, this is where the permissions from the previous chapter show up.

I hit my plan's limit (and nothing happened)

While I was recording, right at this point, I ran out of usage on my ChatGPT account. I'm telling you because it might happen to you, and because it's the best demonstration of what Obsidian is for.

I signed out and signed in with another account. I imported the project, the same New Website folder. And I explained nothing: not what the project was, not where we were, not what was left. I typed "let's continue." The skill read the Obsidian vault and the plan, saw that step 1 was done, and started step 2.

That's what the project memory does. ChatGPT, on its own, forgets. Obsidian doesn't. Every step that finishes gets written down, and gets pushed to GitHub. You can leave it for a week and come back.

If you want to see the memory with your own eyes, open Obsidian, choose "Open vault" and point it at the project folder. You'll see the notes, and in the top right, the map: all of them linked together. You don't need to understand any of it yet. Just know it's there.