Questions for Mark, 2026-05-21. Talk through these into Bidet, send me the cleaned text, I turn it into a real research report with concrete options + costs + how-to-apply.
The ask: Hannah's hardware budget got me thinking — what about you? You've been doing this AI stack work intensely for months. Some of what you've built is genuinely portfolio-grade. The question is whether formalizing any of it (certs, classes, credentials) opens doors worth the time.
Six prompts below. Talk each one for 1-3 minutes into Bidet, paste cleaned text into Claude or send to me. Don't try to answer them all in one sitting. Even 2-3 honest answers tell me enough to build the report.
If you imagine the version of yourself a year from now that's "set up", what does that look like? Still teaching? Doing something AI-adjacent? Both? Consulting? Building products?
Is there a credential or a title that would make a door open — or even one you'd just want to have for yourself, regardless of doors?
What does "career insurance" mean to you right now? Anything specific you're nervous about?
2. Existing credentials + history ~3 min
Talk through:
Walk through your education + every cert you already have (teaching license, the masters, any tech certs, any short-courses). Don't worry about order.
What's expired, what's current, what's renewable?
Anything you started and didn't finish? (Bootcamps, online courses, partial degrees — the honest list.)
3. What you've actually built recently ~3 min
Talk through:
Quick inventory: list everything you've shipped or stood up in the last 12 months that you'd be willing to show someone. The TP3 stack, Bidet, the dashboard, the watchers, the SMS backfill, the brief pipeline — all of it.
Which one are you proudest of? Which one taught you the most?
For each, what specifically did you do (vs. what I did)? Decisions, design, debugging, the architecture calls. Be honest with yourself — and credit yourself fully where you should.
4. AI cert / class landscape — what you've already noticed ~2 min
Talk through:
What AI courses, certs, or programs have you seen come across your feed recently that stuck? Anthropic stuff, OpenAI, Coursera/DeepLearning.AI, Google, Microsoft, university programs — just name what you remember.
Anyone you follow who's done one and you liked their take?
What's your gut feeling — does any of this actually mean anything in the real market, or is it credentialism theater?
5. Time + money budget ~1 min
Talk through:
Realistically — hours/week you'd put toward something like this, given school + family + the stack work you're already doing?
Spend ceiling you're comfortable with for the next 12 months on credentials/learning? Range is fine ($0 / under $500 / $500-$2000 / above).
Any deadlines or windows? (e.g., "I'd want anything formal done before the Charleston move," "by summer," "no rush.")
6. The contrarian angle ~1 min
Talk through:
If you DIDN'T do any formal cert/class — just kept building publicly, kept the dashboard, the Bidet contest entry, the dev.to article, kept shipping — would that be enough? What would you NEED a piece of paper for that the body of work doesn't already cover?
What's the smallest, fastest, most-useful version of "credentialing" you could imagine for yourself? (Even if it's just "a one-pager about who I am + a portfolio link.")
What I do with your answers
Once you send me cleaned text from any 2+ prompts, I build a real report covering:
Cert landscape — every AI/dev cert that's actually credible in 2026 with cost, time-to-complete, who recognizes it, who doesn't
Class options — short courses (DeepLearning.AI, Anthropic Academy, university extensions) vs longer programs (CS masters), with the cost/benefit honest
Portfolio path — if you skip formal credentialing, what does "show, don't tell" look like for someone with your stack — landing page, GitHub presentation, a public-facing writeup of what you've built
Concrete rec with steelman + counter-steelman, like the William report did
Heads up: I'll also probably push back on at least one of your answers — that's the point. If you say "I want a CS masters" but the rest of the dump says "I want optionality in the next 6 months," those don't reconcile, and you should know that before you spend $40K.