Cohort 1 · Applications open
Proof of Work
Eight weeks. Eight real projects. Proof you can do the work.
Most AI training leaves you with notes about someone else’s demo. This one leaves you with a published portfolio of work you did on your own job, your own data and your own problems — the kind of evidence that answers “what have you actually built?” The core eight weeks are free.
- Live sessions
- Thursdays, 7:00–8:30pm ET
- Commitment
- 8 weeks, ~4 hrs/week
- You ship
- 8 real projects
- Cost
- Free · 40 places
Information session
Thursday, September 17, 2026
7:00–8:30pm ET, online. Come with questions.
Applications close
Thursday, September 24, 2026
Everyone hears back within a week.
Week 1
Thursday, October 1, 2026
The cohort starts. Bring your task.
Graduation
Thursday, November 19, 2026
You present what you built.
Five things you will be able to do, and prove.
Not five topics you sat through. Each one is attached to something you shipped and can show to someone who is deciding whether to hire you, fund you, or let you lead the work.
Frame the problem
Define what is actually broken, and what better would measurably look like, before reaching for a tool.
Work with AI deliberately
Prompting as an engineering discipline: structured output, tested against a rubric, versioned like code.
Verify and disclose
Check the model's work, find where it fails, and state the limits out loud. The habit most training skips.
Automate and build
Ship a working automation and a tool-using assistant against a real system, with a human in the loop.
Show the result
Demo in two minutes, write the one-page memo, and publish the evidence where someone can check it.
Proof of Work — Core
Awarded on completion, shareable, and checkable by anyone who asks.
Eight weeks, eight things you build.
In week one you name a real task you already do every week — chasing invoices, writing the same report, sorting a rota. Everything you build for the next eight weeks attaches to that task. That is what turns eight exercises into one portfolio.
Every session is live on a Thursday at 7:00–8:30pm ET and recorded. Projects are due before the next session and every one gets written feedback.
- Week 1Thu, Oct 1Frame the problem
Start with the problem, not the tool
You ship: The Problem Brief
Pick one recurring task from your job, volunteer role or studies — something you personally do at least weekly. Time it honestly for a week. Map every step. Write a one-page brief stating the task, the current time and cost, who it affects, and what a measurably better version looks like. This task is your through-line for all eight weeks.
- Week 2Thu, Oct 8Work with AI deliberately
Prompting is engineering, not conversation
You ship: The Reusable Prompt
Turn week 1's task into a prompt someone else could run and get the same quality. Define the output structure. Write a five-point rubric for a good answer. Run it five times on five real inputs, score each against your rubric, and document every failure mode you hit.
- Week 3Thu, Oct 15Verify and disclose
Assume it is wrong until you have checked
You ship: The Red-Team Report
Attack your own week 2 output. Where does it fabricate? What does it get confidently wrong on edge cases? Whose data went into the prompt, and should it have? Produce a one-page limits-and-disclosure note: what this prompt must not be used for, what a human must check every time, and the disclosure line that goes to anyone receiving its output.
- Week 4Thu, Oct 22Show the result
Numbers you can defend
You ship: The One-Chart Answer
Take a real, messy public dataset connected to your problem or your community — a local budget, 311 calls, inspection records, public health statistics. Clean it with AI assistance, then answer exactly one question with exactly one chart. Write the three caveats a sceptical reader would raise, and answer them.
- Week 5Thu, Oct 29Automate and build
Make it run without you
You ship: The Automation
Build a working automation for the week 1 task, end to end, in whatever your workplace actually allows — Power Automate, Apps Script, Zapier, Make, a script, a Claude Project. It must run on real input and produce real output without you babysitting it. Measure the new time-per-run against your week 1 baseline.
- Week 6Thu, Nov 5Automate and build
An assistant that uses tools
You ship: The Assistant
Build an assistant that uses at least two tools against a real system — reading a document store, querying a sheet, calling an API, sending a draft for approval. Put a human approval step in front of anything it changes. Write ten test cases, run them, and report your pass rate honestly.
- Week 7Thu, Nov 12Show the result
The work is not done until someone decides
You ship: The Two-Minute Demo
Record a two-minute demo aimed at a decision maker who is not technical, and write the one-page memo that goes with it: the problem, what you built, what it measurably changed, what it costs, what you recommend. No jargon. Two minutes means two minutes.
- Week 8Thu, Nov 19Show the result
Publish the evidence
You ship: The Portfolio Page
Publish one public page covering the whole eight weeks: the problem, the baseline, what you built, the measured result, and the limits you found. Link the demo. This is the artefact you send to an employer instead of describing yourself as 'AI-familiar'. Present it at graduation.
The eight weeks are free. They stay free.
There is no upsell inside the programme and no card required to finish it. Afterwards, graduates who want their portfolio taken further can apply for a paid capstone. Most will not need to, and that is fine.
Core
Free8 weeks
The full eight weeks, the eight projects, every live session and the digital badge. No cost, no catch, no card.
- Eight live 90-minute sessions, recorded if you have to miss one
- All eight project briefs, with the rubric you will be marked against
- Written feedback on every project you submit
- A cohort channel and a build partner
- The Proof of Work — Core digital badge on completion
Capstone
$4975 further sessions
For graduates who want the portfolio taken further and put in front of people who hire. Capped at twelve, applied for after week 6.
- Everything in Core
- Three 1:1 coaching sessions on your portfolio and your positioning
- A line-by-line review of your published work by Jermaine
- Demo Day in front of invited employers and association partners
- A written reference letter describing what you actually built
Who this is for
- Sixteen or older. No degree, no prior tech experience, no coding required.
- A computer and a reliable internet connection.
- About four hours a week: one 90-minute live session plus build time.
- A real recurring task you own — at work, in a volunteer role, or in your studies. Everything you build attaches to it.
No prior AI experience is expected. If you have never written a prompt beyond asking a chatbot for a recipe, you are exactly who this was built for.
Proof of Work — Core
You earn the badge by:
- —Six of eight projects submitted and marked as meeting the rubric
- —Six of eight live sessions attended
- —The week 8 portfolio page published and presented
A digital badge issued by JMCB Technology Group. It is a record of work you completed and can be checked — not an accredited academic qualification.
Not sure this is the right thing for you? Take the free six-minute Career Compass first. It scores your job search across seven dimensions and tells you honestly whether the role you want is realistic today.
Take the Career CompassApply for Cohort 1
Applications close Thursday, September 24, 2026. It takes about five minutes, and there is one question that actually decides it.
Want to run this inside your organisation?
Proof of Work runs as a private cohort for workforce programmes, associations, ministries and internal academies — same eight projects, your people, your systems, and a documented record of what the cohort shipped.