Meaningful work, shipped in a summer — for thirty minutes of your time a week.
You have a project that would genuinely move if someone owned it for a summer. You don't have the bandwidth to onboard, scope, and supervise a traditional intern. Orchid is designed around exactly that gap.
If you're any of these, we can probably help.
Small non-profits
You need a working tool, a cleaned dataset, or a bit of infrastructure that full-time staff can't prioritize.
Academic researchers
You have an interesting problem that would benefit from a summer of focused student effort — instrumentation, data pipelines, replication, visualization.
Early-stage founders
You're pre-seed or bootstrapping and need a defined feature or exploration done, with an intern who isn't going to ghost you in week three.
Technical teams in non-tech orgs
You're the one person who codes inside a museum, a food bank, or a school district. You need help. You don't have a team to loan one out.
Independent researchers
You're an engineer or scientist working on a personal project and would value a collaborator — someone to help build, benchmark, write up, or argue with.
Open-source maintainers
You have a backlog of issues that need a dedicated summer of attention. You'd like a mentored contributor rather than a drive-by PR.
Designed around the time you actually have.
We ask for roughly 30 minutes a week during the summer, plus three longer touchpoints. Most hosts spend less once the rhythm is set.
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One 30-minute intake
You fill out a Problem Brief (~20 min) and we'll follow up with a 30-minute conversation to sharpen it. This is the most important hour of the program — a clear brief is the single biggest predictor of a strong summer.
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One 30-minute Week-1 kickoff
You meet your matched intern, walk them through context, and answer questions. We'll send you a pre-generated agenda drafted from your brief and their profile.
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Weekly digest — read in 3 minutes
Every Friday you get a short email: what shipped this week, what's planned for next, blockers needing your input, open questions. Drafted by Claude from the week's journal and commits, edited by the intern before send.
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PR reviews on your schedule
Major work lands as pull requests. You can review asynchronously at your pace. Typical commitment: 2–3 PR reviews per week, ~5 minutes each.
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Two longer check-ins
A mid-program review (~45 min) and a final wrap-up (~60 min). We provide the templates; you bring the feedback.
The scaffolding that traditionally eats your time.
Scoping support
We help you turn a fuzzy "it would be nice if…" into a Problem Brief with observable acceptance criteria, named non-goals, and a realistic time budget. Scope drift is the top cause of intern-project failure; the brief is the antidote.
Intern matching
Every applicant fills out a calibration profile — coding experience, AI-tool fluency, learning goals, communication style. We match for fit, not just availability.
Tooling setup
Matched pairs get a pre-configured repo, a CLAUDE.md tuned to your project, a journaling vault, git safeguards, and a weekly digest pipeline. Day 1 is the work, not the install logs.
Communication scaffolding
Interns journal daily. Weekly sponsor digests are drafted automatically and reviewed before send. 1:1 agendas come pre-populated from the week's work. A stuck protocol keeps interns from paging you with half-formed questions.
Mid-program check-in
We run a structured halfway review to catch scope, fit, or pace issues before they become end-of-summer regrets. You get a template; we moderate if useful.
Final wrap-up
We help you author a reference letter (drafted from the journal, edited by you) and a public project writeup if the work is open. Interns leave with a portfolio piece that reflects what they actually built.
The synergy is turning any normal intern into an excellent, organized communicator — and letting hosts give material guidance in minutes, not hours.
From brief to summer end.
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Submit a Problem Brief
Use the Host Problem Brief form. About 20 minutes of focused writing. We'll read it within a week and schedule a sharpening call.
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We sharpen and publish
After the call, we'll refine the brief and post it to the open projects board. Qualified interns browse and indicate interest.
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We match and introduce
We review interested interns against your brief and recommend a match. You have a final say — if the fit isn't right, we find another.
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Summer runs
Kickoff in week one, weekly digests, PR reviews, mid-program check-in, final wrap. Your time stays bounded; the intern's learning stays central.
A few honest answers.
Who owns the IP?
You do, unless you choose otherwise. You specify repo visibility and IP terms in the Problem Brief. Public-by-default is common for research and open-source projects; private is common for product work. We don't take ownership stakes.
What if the project isn't a fit?
Mid-program check-ins exist precisely to catch this. In rare cases we help rescope or — if truly unrecoverable — part ways with dignity on both sides. The intern keeps what they built; you keep your time.
Is there a fee?
No. Orchid is a program of the Orchid Initiative, a 501(c)(3). We welcome donations that help us expand the cohort.
Are interns paid?
The program matches interns to projects; compensation is between the host and the intern. Many projects are unpaid; others are modest stipends. We're direct with applicants about expectations so the match is honest on both sides.
What AI tools do interns use?
The workflow is built around Claude Code. Your repo includes a CLAUDE.md tuned to your project, which calibrates Claude's behavior — explanation depth, verification discipline, safeguards on sensitive code paths.
Does that mean the intern is really just Claude?
No. The program enforces a teach-back rule: interns can't merge code they can't explain. Claude is a collaborator, not a substitute. The goal is to raise the floor of what a motivated student can ship in a summer, not to automate the student out.
Ready to host?
The Problem Brief takes about 20 minutes of focused thinking. We'll take it from there.