1 min lesson
Have the demos truly ready
Rebuild the main list in "Have the demos truly ready", then say what each item changes.
Step 1 of 3
Have the demos truly ready
A live demo that fails in the first minute spends your credibility before you've earned any. De-risk it like you'd de-risk a deploy.
- Run it locally and on a clean machine or browser the night before - no “it works on my setup” surprises.
- Have a hosted fallback URL in case the local build dies mid-session.
- Keep a short screen recording of the interaction as a last resort and say plainly that the live version is what you'd normally show.
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Full explanation
Pre-empt the questions a DE always gets
Pre-empt the questions a DE always gets
- Performance
- “This animates transform/opacity only and holds 60fps on a mid-tier laptop.”
- Accessibility
- “It's keyboard-operable, focus is visible and the contrast clears AA on dark.”
- Edge cases
- “Here's the empty state, the long-content overflow and the interrupted-animation path.”
- Reuse
- “The component API takes a variant and a size; here's how a teammate would consume it.”
Volunteering these does two jobs at once. It answers the question and it proves you think about the unglamorous surfaces by default - the end-to-end ownership Cursor expects, where one person designs, builds, ships and supports the feature.
Do one full run on a screen recording and watch it back before the real thing. You will catch filler words, a piece that runs long and the spot where you bury the lede. One pass tightens the story more than re-reading your notes five times. Aim to cut the walkthrough to the point where every sentence either shows craft or sets up the next demo.
End each piece with a forward-looking line: “if I owned this for another week, I'd add reduced-motion support and virtualize the list past 200 rows.” It mirrors the trial's “what's next” beat, shows you see past the demo and signals the ownership instinct without you having to claim it.