A starting point for students who don't have one yet.
Orchid pairs college students with meaningful projects and a tightly-scaffolded AI-first workflow. Hosts get real help for minimal time. Interns get a serious summer, a finished portfolio piece, and a set of habits that outlast the program.
Three moves. One summer.
We keep the admin thin so the work stays rich.
Hosts post a brief
A 30-minute structured intake turns a vague idea into a workable project — with a real goal, a real "done," and a real time budget on both sides.
Interns apply
Students fill out a calibration profile — experience, tools, learning goals, communication style — so we can match well instead of matching fast.
Orchid seeds a workspace
Matched pairs get a pre-configured repo, a CLAUDE.md tuned to the project, a journal vault, and a weekly digest pipeline. Day 1 is about the work, not the setup.
Claude Code, not Claude-does-your-job.
The workflow treats Claude Code as a patient, available collaborator — the kind of senior engineer every intern wishes they could ask dumb questions to. We pair it with a tight communication structure so the intern's learning stays central and the host's time stays protected.
Every session ends with a journal entry. Every week produces a digest drafted from commits and questions, reviewed by the intern, and sent to the host. When a decision comes up, we write it down in five bullets. When a blocker appears, the intern runs a stuck protocol before paging a human.
The result: a summer that produces both a shipped project and a set of habits — planning, verification, decision capture, async communication — that travel with the intern into every future role.
The synergy is turning any normal intern into an excellent, organized communicator — and letting hosts give material guidance in minutes, not hours.
Four pillars.
Scoped problems
Every project opens with a locked Problem Brief: goal, non-goals, acceptance criteria, and a realistic time budget. Scope amendments require an explicit sponsor note — drift is the most common failure mode, and we refuse to let it be the default.
Honest communication
Weekly sponsor digests, written agendas for 1:1s, decision records for non-reversible choices, and a stuck protocol that forces clarity before escalation. Interns leave better writers than they arrived.
Disciplined tooling
Claude Code on a working Linux environment, a pre-configured repo with git safeguards, conventional commits with journal-queryable trailers, and an Obsidian vault for private reflection and shared artifacts.
Protected host time
We design for sponsors to spend 30 minutes a week and still feel fully in the loop. The weekly digest, PR-based reviews, and pre-structured 1:1s carry the rest.
Host a project
You have a project that would genuinely move if someone owned it for a summer. Post a brief, we'll help you sharpen it, and we'll pair you with a student who fits.
Start a Problem Brief
College studentsApply as an intern
You didn't land the traditional summer role — or you're looking for something more interesting than the ones on offer. Tell us about yourself and what you'd like to spend a summer on.
Fill out a profile
New to Claude Code?
The setup guide walks you from zero to a working workspace in under an hour. Read it before you apply or after you're matched — either works.