If you used to build, you can build again.
The shortest path I know back to building. It assumes you know how software fits together but haven't shipped much lately — which is most operators.
Pick one real problem you have.
Not a to-do app from a tutorial. Something that annoys you most weeks. The annoyance is the fuel that carries you through the boring middle.
Set up Claude Code and a scratch repo.
Don't architect anything. Make an empty repo, open it, and describe the first small thing out loud. Let the draft be wrong — fixing it is the point.
Ship something ugly this week.
Not next month. This week. Ugly and finished beats elegant and theoretical every single time — and finishing is the part you're actually out of practice at.
Own every change before it lands.
You don't have to type it, and you don't have to read every line. But you have to understand what changed and why, enough to stand behind it. That judgment is the whole job now.
Put it in public.
A repo, a post, a link you send to one person. Public is what turns a hobby into reps — and it's how you find out what you actually know.
Claude Code · Codex CLI · Compounds · a plain editor · git, still