Video 08 — Alex’s first day on the project
Protagonist: Alex (Developer) Arc: Setup Target length: 3:00 Apps in frame: Security Setup · Pass Manager · Dev Tools · Git Projects · Workspace Manager
Story beat
Alex logged in for the first time. Zero dev tooling, zero repos, zero secrets. By the end of this video Alex is sitting in Cursor with buildbarn-forms open, tests green, and a story picked up from the backlog. This is the “three-minute zero-to-productive” demo.
Pre-seeded state
- VM has Dana’s config (Video 01), Pat’s stories (Video 02), Jordan’s pipeline (Video 03).
- Alex’s pass store is empty — secrets will arrive via team-distribution during the video.
- Alex has a GitHub account that’s been added to
acme-corpwith push access but no localghauth yet.
Scene list
- First login (0:00–0:25) — Alex logs in at LightDM. Security Setup auto-launches. Wizard runs: pinentry configured, GPG key generated (from scratch — minimal wait), pass store initialized, SSH key generated and added to GitHub via
gh ssh-key add. Narration covers that this is a one-time wizard. - Secret distribution (0:25–0:55) — Pass Manager opens. Sidebar shows empty store. A notification pops: “Dana has shared 3 secrets with you. Accept?” Alex clicks accept.
acme/jira-token,acme/github-pat,acme/npm-publish-tokenland in Alex’s store, encrypted to Alex’s new GPG key. - Dev Tools (0:55–1:30) — Open Dev Tools. Cursor, VS Code, Claude CLI, ripgrep already on the “recommended” list for this project. Alex clicks Install all. Progress bars. Done.
- Clone + verify (1:30–2:30) — Open Git Projects →
buildbarn-forms. Click Install Project. RobOS clones, runs the dev-setup script Dana authored (npm install), then runs the test script (npm test) — 51 tests passing. Green banner. - Workspace ready (2:30–3:00) — Workspace Manager now shows
buildbarn-formswith git branchmain, clean state, detected IDEs. Alex clicks Open in Cursor. Cut to Cursor open on the code. Narration closes: “From fresh login to working checkout, three minutes.”
Narration cues (draft)
| # | At | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0:00 | Alex just logged in for the first time. Security Setup runs once: GPG key, SSH key, pass store, GitHub auth. |
| 2 | 0:30 | Team secrets arrive via Pass Manager — encrypted to Alex’s new GPG key, never in plain text. |
| 3 | 1:00 | Dev Tools installs the IDEs and CLIs the project needs. The recommendation list is in the Git Projects config Dana set up. |
| 4 | 1:45 | Git Projects clones the repo, runs the dev-setup script, runs the tests. Everything green before Alex touches any code. |
| 5 | 2:35 | Workspace Manager recognizes the new project. One click, Cursor opens on main. |
| 6 | 2:55 | Three minutes from login to working checkout. Now Alex picks up a story. |
Blockers / ready-checklist
- Pass Manager “team distribution” UI — not yet built as of v0.0.5. Options: build it for this series (a simple flow that decrypts shared entries with the new GPG key), or narrate past it by pre-seeding Alex’s store during cloud-init. Decide before recording.
- Dev Tools must have a “recommended per project” list driven by Git Projects config, not just a global list. Verify.
npm teston buildbarn-forms at the ad417f7 commit is passing in a fresh clone. Test on a scratch VM before recording — if there’s drift (dep updates, etc), pin versions.
Deliverables produced by this video
- Alex’s home dir ready for development, with keys + repo + IDE.
- This is the baseline state every engineering-arc video (05–14) starts from, reverted-to between takes.