Learn · Intended Design
The skill that directs AI to build applications
AI can help you describe an application. It cannot decide what is worth building, or whether it is right. Describing the application precisely, from the business side, is the skill that puts you in charge, and it can be learned.
The learning path
From first Intended Design to leading the build
Six levels. Each one is something you can do, not something you have read.
Why it matters
The valuable skill is moving up a level
Every few decades the work moves up a level. Today AI helps you create the Intended Design and the engine produces the code, so the work that matters is deciding what to build, describing it so that people and AI share it, and checking the result. Part of the skill is knowing what belongs in the Intended Design and what stays in code.
Prompting alone
- Plausible code, no proof it is right
- Every request starts from scratch
- Rules are scattered through files
- Hard to review, hard to change safely
Prompting plus an Intended Design
- Changes validated against the whole application
- The AI works from a connected graph
- Rules written once, stated explicitly
- Reviewed and governed at the Intended Design
Three ways in
Whoever you are, there is a starting point
You become a Designer
You understand how the business works. Learn to describe it as objects, screens and rules, and watch it become a working application, without learning a programming language first.
You will learn to
- Describe a domain as connected objects
- Design forms and navigation visually
- Ask zAI for changes, and review them
- Test what you built, right in Studio
You become a Design Developer
You already write code. Learn the language, extend the Intended Design where it needs precision, and open the generated solution in your own tools. Less boilerplate, more of the interesting work.
You will learn to
- Write logic once in the language
- Read and trace the generated code
- Connect services and external systems
- Work with AI agents over MCP
You become a Design Architect
You shape systems for a living. Learn to think in views, choose targets and govern change at the level of intent, so a team and its AI all build the same thing.
You will learn to
- Structure an application across six views
- Define standards and validation rules
- Choose and compare targets
- Govern AI-assisted change
What you can do
Skills that travel with you
You learn Intended Design in zAppDev Studio and the language, and the habit of describing systems clearly carries over.
Turn an idea into an application
Go from a business need to a running application you can show people.
Direct AI with precision
Ask for exactly the change you mean, in Studio or from your own MCP agent, and check it against the whole system.
Read a system as a graph
See how parts connect and what depends on what in your own application.
Describe it once
Keep the Intended Design valuable as the target technology changes.
Work across disciplines
A shared Intended Design lets business, design and engineering talk about the same thing.
Keep what you build
The code is yours and open, so what you learn stays yours.
Recognition
Show what you can do
Planned levels of recognition, built around real projects instead of exams.
Foundation
Describe and run a first application.
Practitioner
Deliver a complete, connected application.
Architect
Govern Intended Designs and targets across a team.
The guide
Thinking in Intended Design
A practical guide to Intended Design in the AI era: business objects, rules, screens and the links between them, and how to work with an AI agent on an Intended Design. It is written for analysts, architects, developers and students, and it follows one small application that we built in zAppDev for it. Draft 0.1, 25 pages.
Your first Intended Design
Start by making something
Create a free account
Open Studio in your browser. Nothing to install.
Pick the Web application template
Sign-in, users, roles and a Welcome page are already there.
Ask zAI for a Customer list
Review the change, build, and see it run.
Learn the skill. Build the future.
Create a free account and make your first Intended Design.
Create free account Read the documentation