THE BUILD ORDER CHECKLIST
Stand up one room at a time, in order. Don't open the next room until the
one before it runs without your hand on it. Press, brain, store, signal.


THE RULE BEFORE YOU START
Do not build all four rooms in one weekend. You will drown and own nothing
by Sunday night. Open one room, give it everything, get it standing, then
move on. A quarter of a tired man finishes nothing.

  [ ] I am building ONE room at a time, in the order below.
  [ ] I have a domain I registered and hold (or it's the first thing I buy).


ROOM 1, PRESS (the slab everything else sits on)
The static site goes first. It's the fastest win and the ground every other
room stands on. The store page lives on it. The newsletter archive lives on
it. The brain feeds it.

  [ ] Picked a static site generator.
  [ ] Wrote one real post (not a placeholder).
  [ ] Pushed it live to a cheap host with one command.
  [ ] Loaded a page I own, on a domain I control, in a browser.
  [ ] STOP. Sit with that. That feeling is the whole product.


ROOM 2, BRAIN (the pantry the other rooms eat from)
Move your notes into plain text in a folder you control. This is the raw
material every post, product, and show crawls out of. Don't overbuild it.

  [ ] Made one folder for the whole operation.
  [ ] Notes, drafts, half-ideas, and product outlines live there as plain
      text files.
  [ ] Pried the notes loose from whatever app was renting them back to me.
  [ ] It's greppable and backed up by copying. Owned by nobody but me.
  [ ] Did NOT rebuild a bloated subscription stack inside the folder.


ROOM 3, STORE (prove one dollar moves)
Put a storefront page on your own domain. Wire a checkout service behind it.
Sell ONE thing. You're proving the pipe holds, not filling a catalog.

  [ ] Storefront page lives on the static site from Room 1.
  [ ] Reached into the brain and grabbed the roughest small useful thing in
      there to sell first.
  [ ] Wired a checkout service behind the page (it takes its cut only when a
      sale clears. It eats when you eat.
  [ ] Watched one real dollar travel a pipe I own, end to end.
  [ ] Did NOT try to launch thirty products in a weekend.


ROOM 4, SIGNAL (heaviest, least urgent, only if you have one)
Audio, video, a stream. Self-host it once the rest is steady. Most people
don't have one yet, and that's fine. It waits.

  [ ] The press, brain, and store all run without my hand on them daily.
  [ ] If I have a signal, it's self-hosted on something I control.
  [ ] It points back at the domain that ties the whole operation together.
  [ ] If I don't have one yet, I skipped this room with no guilt.


THE LONG GAME, WHY THE ORDER LANDS ON A SHELF
The catalog is the product. Not any one launch. The whole shelf, working
across time, converting strangers while you sleep. Every item is a brick.
You're laying a wall, and the wall keeps paying out for years.

  [ ] I'm building a shelf, not chasing a launch.
  [ ] I know month three looks like failure and isn't. Those are roots.
  [ ] When the early energy burns off, I add a brick and go to bed. The
      shelf is still there in the morning, working the room.

Cheap isn't the win. Ownership is. Cheap is just what ownership costs you
once you stop paying rent. Go pour the slab.