Founding pilot · 6 of 6 founding spots open · Saratoga Springs area
Learn AI Coding Through Minecraft Modding
An in-home, one-on-one course for teens 13+. 5 sessions. They leave with a real mod they built and an AI coding workflow they can keep using.
A program by Pheirce Bytes, in partnership with Bright Tomorrow.
Founding pilot6 families
6 of 6 founding spots open$509$359$349 course + $10 AI credit, all in
Founding price for the first 6 families. After that, the same course is $509.
- 5 private sessions at your house, 75–90 minutes each, plus a short setup visit
- A limited AI key set up for your student, enough for the whole course
- A recap for the parent after each visit
- Travel included in Saratoga Springs, Lehi, Eagle Mountain, American Fork, and Highland
Minecraft Java Edition is bought separately. This is a complete course with a finish line, not ongoing tutoring.
What your teen builds
Over the 5 sessions they build Sentient Pets, a real Minecraft mod, with an AI coding agent as their collaborator. A quest giver at world spawn hands out a chain of gather quests that ends in a sentience potion. Feed it to a pet and the pet wakes up and talks.
By the end, the pet’s replies come from a small language model running on the student’s own computer, with hand-written lines as the fallback, and the mod downloads and manages that model itself. It’s a finished thing they can hand to a friend, not a classroom exercise.
Why a game mod, not a coding class
I still see the Scratch “visual programming” environment positioned as an introductory path to programming for kids, but unlike game modding, I have never heard a “success story”, where someone credits their early experience with Scratch as key to a fulfilling career. Anyone?
Kids don’t learn to code because a worksheet told them to. They learn because there’s a game they love and something they want it to do. Modding turns that itch into a reason to read code, ask a good question, and fix a bug. That’s how I started. This course just gives them a real project, a real toolchain, and an AI partner so the setup doesn’t kill the spark.
The sessions
Session 0: Setup
A short visit with the instructor present. Run the install script, sign in to the AI coding agent, create the Minecraft instance, and check that everything works before session one.
Session 1: The first prompt
Describe the game to the AI, plan it together, and let it build the first version. No code is typed by hand. The job is to say clearly what the player should experience.
Session 2: Into the real game
Get the mod running in actual Minecraft, learn the bug-report formula a human or an AI can act on, and automate the build-and-install loop.
Session 3: Polish
Decide how each moment should feel, play-test for feel and not just function, and rewrite the quest giver's dialogue by hand in the student's own voice.
Session 4: A brain for the pet
Run a small language model on the student's own computer with llama.cpp and wire the pet to it, with hand-written lines as the fallback when the model isn't there.
Session 5: On its own
The mod checks the machine, downloads and launches the model itself, and shuts it down with the game. The pet gets an editable personality and a memory of what you've said.
Sessions run 75–90 minutes so there’s room to slow down, or go deeper, wherever your teen needs it. Every session is written up in the public curriculum.
How the AI part works
This isn’t pasting code out of a chatbot. The student works with a real AI coding agent in the project, the same kind professional developers use, and learns the habits that make it work:
- Describe the game, not the code. Say what the player should experience and let the AI decide how to build it.
- Ask it what you’ve missed. Treat it as a partner with questions to answer, not a vending machine.
- Stay in charge. The student decides what the game is, checks the AI’s work, reports bugs so a human or an AI can act on them, and commits every step that works.
What they leave with
- A working Fabric mod as a single .jar file they can hand to a friend. Anyone with Minecraft Java Edition and Fabric can drop it in their mods folder and play it.
- A quest giver at world spawn, with dialogue in the student's own voice, handing out a chain of gather quests that ends in a sentience potion.
- A sentient pet that wakes up when fed the potion and talks back, with replies generated by a small language model running on their own computer.
- A mod that installs its own model: it checks the computer, downloads what's missing with progress shown in-game, and starts and stops the model server with the game.
- A git history of the whole project, one commit per working step, that the student made themselves.
- A PLAN.md that describes the mod as built and how to install it, written with the AI and kept honest across the sessions.
- A development setup that keeps working after the course: they can open the AI coding agent in the project and keep building.
Real hands-on time with
- IntelliJ IDEA
- Git
- Java
- Gradle
- Fabric
- opencode (AI coding agent)
- OpenRouter
- llama.cpp
What you need
- A teen aged 13 or older. No coding experience needed.
- A computer that runs Minecraft Java Edition. Windows 10 or 11 has the smoothest setup today; Mac families are welcome and help me finish the Mac setup process.
- Minecraft Java Edition, bought separately, installed, and launched at least once.
- A parent who is comfortable with the sessions happening at your house.
- A home in Saratoga Springs, Lehi, Eagle Mountain, American Fork, or Highland. Outside that, ask about meeting at a library or makerspace.
Why founding families
The course is built and tested. I wrote it and ran it with my daughter, and the lessons, setup script, and guides are public. This founding round opens it to 6 more students so I can lock in timing and examples with teens who aren’t mine. Your feedback after each session is part of the deal, and that’s why the price is lower than the finished course will be.
Who’s teaching
I’m Brian Kirkby. I started programming as a kid, taught myself, and have been shipping software professionally for more than thirty years, including Novell, Adobe, and Zappos. I work with AI coding agents every day. I run Pheirce Bytes from Saratoga Springs.
The longer version, and what I do for grown-ups, is on the AI consulting page, and some of what I’ve built is in my projects.
Questions parents ask
Does my teen need to know how to code?
No. Session one starts with describing the game in plain English and letting the AI plan and build the first version. They learn to read the code as they go, and by session three they're editing dialogue by hand.
What does the $10 AI credit cover?
Each student gets their own OpenRouter key, capped at $10, that the AI coding agent uses during the course. That is more than enough for the course material. If your student wants to keep going beyond it, the key can be topped up to whatever amount you'd like to provide.
Is this ongoing tutoring?
No. It's a complete 5-session course with a clear finish line. When it's done, your teen has a mod they built and a setup they can keep using on their own.
What if they get stuck between sessions?
Founding students become founding members of the course Discord, where they can compare notes, share what they've built, and help each other out between visits. I keep an eye on it and answer there. A quick text or email works too, and if something won't install or the game won't launch, I'll help sort it out at the next visit.
We have a Mac. Can we still do it?
Yes. The setup script and guide are Windows-first today, and I'm looking for founding families on a Mac to help me work out that process. The course itself is the same; a little more patience during setup may be needed while we get it right.
Can two siblings do it together?
Absolutely, yes, for the founding pilot families. Siblings can sit in on the same sessions and build side by side.
6 of 6 founding spots open. Send your teen's age and city and I'll get back to you within a day.