Build Here helps you understand a problem, try an improvement, and learn from what it changes. It is for people who want to start, for builders who want to get better, for people growing a team, and for people who want to back them concretely.
You can practise in a job, in study, in a community group, or on a personal project. Helping someone directly, keeping a service running, easing an access, and passing knowledge on are all ways of building.
Why this book exists
I went looking for builders, and mostly saw the ones my network made visible. I took the output of that filter for a measure of the level around me. That was my mistake. It was on me to look at the work more closely.
This book starts from that correction. It gathers practices for building, for getting better, and for making it possible for others to do the same. What they are worth is in connecting them to a situation you recognise and to a move you can try. Passing on what you learn can run through a conversation, an internal note, a person you trained, or a public example.
Finding a useful way in
The four paths give you a direct way in. The short cards read on their own: principle, diagnostic, practice, or system. The ten capabilities organise the book without ranking people or imposing a single route through.
If you do not yet know which subject to choose, the builder test is optional. It gives your level, from 1 to 5, from what you did in recent months, then lets you choose a line of work. The answers are sent nowhere; you can keep them on your device to see what moved next time. The method sets out the choices and the limits.
Examining the ideas and the examples
The book gathers practices, distinctions, and proposals to adapt. It does not claim to have invented every idea or demonstrated a universal method. The annotated reading list lets you find the texts cited and examine what they bring and where they stop.
The card formats explain how to read the advice, its reach, and its examples. The constructed cases are not results observed in the field. A practice that is useful in one context may need a different agreement, more time, or another approach elsewhere.
Sending feedback
On a card, “Did this help?” lets you flag what helps or what is missing. “Discuss this” takes an experience, a question, or a disagreement, reviewed before it goes up. Those features need JavaScript; you do not need a GitHub account to use them.
Give the title or the link of the card, the passage in question, and what your context changes. A precise counter-example helps as much as a correction. Avoid including information you are not allowed to share.
You can also reach me on LinkedIn, particularly if the forms are not working. If you use GitHub, the issues and discussions are open. To propose a translation, a conversation first can save duplicating work already under way.
Reusing and adapting
The book is under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0. You can share and adapt it, including for a workshop, under the terms of that licence: name the source and your changes, and share adaptations under the same licence. The reference text stays available.
The source repository holds the text, the site, and the checking tools. It is also where you propose a correction or an adaptation. The technical information for building the site and the editions is in its README.