About the build flow

The build flow is adapted from the PIE Cookbook — the open-source playbook of the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE PDX), a long-running accelerator that documented how it actually helped people go from an idea to a working venture. The cookbook is published openly; this flow re-uses its structure and metaphor and points back to the source throughout.

Source & attribution

The section structure here mirrors the PIE Cookbook’s own outline — About, Baking PIE, Kitchen Prep, Cooking, Other flavors of PIE, and Appendix. Read the original at github.com/piepdx/pie-cookbook. Where this site adapts the language, it says so; it does not put words in the cookbook’s mouth.

Why a cooking metaphor

The cookbook frames building something as cooking: you take stock of your kitchen (Kitchen Prep — the environmental scan), you assemble ingredients and use the right equipment (Cooking — base ingredients, the oven, the recipes), and you learn from what worked and what didn’t. The metaphor is useful here because it keeps the focus on the cook — the person with the intent — rather than on the tools. Tools are ingredients; you are still the one cooking.

That is exactly the stance this project takes toward AI agents: the agent is a very capable sous-chef, but you decide what’s for dinner, and you’re accountable for what comes out of the kitchen.

Pair it with the method

PIE is how you cook. Its companion, Socratic Intent Engineering, is how you decide what’s worth cooking — and how you keep the agent aimed at your real goal instead of a convenient proxy. Most projects start there, then flow through these stages.

The shape of the flow

Baking PIE Context and history — why an open accelerator methodology, and why open source.

Kitchen Prep The environmental scan: what you have, what's missing, your working theory.

Cooking The core: base ingredients, the oven, and the recipes — where the catalog plugs in.

Other flavors How collectives and accelerators reuse this as shared infrastructure.

Appendix The toolkit and resources — including the catalog itself.

How to read it

You don’t have to go in order, but most people benefit from starting at Kitchen Prep: name the problem before you reach for a tool. By the time you get to Cooking you’ll be choosing from a catalog of vetted components instead of a search-engine guess.