Ship School is one Saturday in the Bay Area. In the morning the whole room builds the same app and everybody deploys a live URL before lunch. Then you text it to someone. In the afternoon you get four hours, your own idea, and no script. no repos before 2:10pm
the day
*Thirteen hours, three meals, and one rule we enforce hard. It will slip somewhere — every schedule does — and 6:45pm is where we absorb it.
the (
) morning(01)The whole room builds the same small app at the same pace, and everybody deploys a live URL before lunch. No teams, no ideas and no repos exist yet — that is deliberate, and it is what stops the teaching losing to the building.
grind (
) time(02)Two more blocks, then pitches and teams at 2:10pm, then four hours on your own idea with mentors on the floor the whole time. A mentor signs your one-page scope before you write a line, and 6:45pm is a deadline rather than a suggestion.
demo (
) hour(03)Dinner, then everybody demos at a table, then the finalists go on stage in front of the whole room. Awards, and the doors close at nine.
who this is for*
*You've been to a hackathon. You've had an agent write something for you and watched it break. That's the whole bar — not years, not a GitHub profile.
- A laptop you can install things on.
- Codex or Claude Code, already working on it.
- A charger. Nothing else.
No subscription? Tick the box on the signup form and we’ll cover one. No proof, no story, nobody finds out.
what you leave with*
- (01)
A live URL, before lunch
Not on localhost. On the internet, openable on your phone, sendable to your group chat. Everyone in the room gets one and we do not move on until they do.
- (02)
A one-page spec you wrote
One sentence saying what it is. Three to five steps that make up the demo. What you are deliberately not building. The part most likely to break. A mentor signs it before you start.
- (03)
A thing you made in four hours
Your own idea, from your own list, built during Grind Time and demoed at a table to judges and a room of people your age.
- (04)
The habit of checking
How to make an agent open the page, click the button, read the console, and prove the thing works before it tells you it works. This is the part that transfers to everything else you build.
we need money
It’s free for students, so somebody else pays. Right now that is nobody — no sponsors, no venue, no track record. This is the first one.
$500 or one engineer, for about 120 Bay Area high schoolers — sponsors@shipschool.org
sign up
Free, about two minutes. A parent or guardian signs a consent form by September 16, and without it we can’t admit you.
