Here's how Week 7 goes
This page carries less to read than any week before it, because the work happens in Claude, and the checklist below is the whole assignment.
The build checklist
Eight items take your Week 6 scope to a working draft; check them off here as you finish them, in whatever order suits the work.
Your capstone, in eight checks
0 of 8 builtYour checks save in this browser and nowhere else; nobody sees them, and they'll still be here when you come back.
A place, a method, and a rhythm, for one workflow I actually run.
A complete system, worked
Here is the whole assembly for one real workflow, a Success Coach's semester check-in recaps, small enough to read in a minute.
Short, and every line earns its spot
You support a DC CAP Success Coach who visits partner campuses and reports back to the coaching team. Audience: the team channel. Voice: warm, plain, specific. Format: follow-ups first, then the visit in under 150 words. Never real scholar names; describe situations instead.
Three files, each with a job
- Program calendar, aggregate view
- Semester check-in template
- Escalation guide
Trigger: after each campus visit
- Paste de-identified visit notes.
- Draft the recap from the template.
- Flag follow-ups against the escalation guide.
- Format for the team channel.
Guardrail: no individual scholar identifiers, and small groups described rather than counted.
Runs, refreshes, and has an owner
It runs after every campus visit. The coach who built it owns it, by name in the instructions, and re-dates the knowledge files monthly so nothing goes stale in the window.
Follow-ups first: (1) A first-year hasn't registered for fall; worth a coach check-in this week, before seats tighten. (2) A junior is weighing a transfer closer to home; per the escalation guide, loop in the campus liaison before advising.
The visit: met with the sophomore cohort. Energy around fall registration is high, and the group asked sharp questions about renewal timelines. Next visit: [date].
Every part did its job: the coach's instructions set the voice, the template shaped the recap, the escalation guide caught the transfer question, and nothing in the window points at any one scholar.
The Project holds the lane, the skill holds the method, the rhythm keeps both current.
When you stall
Nearly every capstone hits one of these four walls, and each has a fix you can run today.
The instructions run half a page and keep growing.
The fixCut to the lines that change Claude's behavior. If deleting a line changes nothing in the output, it was decoration.
The skill's output drifts from run to run.
The fixAdd one worked example of a good output, and tighten the single step where the drift starts.
A knowledge file sits in the Project doing nothing.
The fixTell the skill when to use it. A file nothing points at is a file Claude walks past.
The scope grew while you weren't looking.
The fixShip the Tuesday version and park the rest on your rough-edges list. Week 8 needs something finished to ship.
Stuck past these four? Say so.
If you're stuck at any point, or you built it and the result underwhelms you, write [email protected] and say where the build stalled. Use that address only, and expect a real answer.
Show your work
Show progress to your build partner or team this week: one thing that works and one that doesn't, and expect the second to be the more useful conversation. Not building? Keep your weekly wins going and skim this page anyway — the checks here are the same ones you already run on every draft.
- Pick the piece that works and can run live in under two minutes.
- Pick the piece that fights you, and be ready to say what you've already tried.
- Rehearse with the prompt below before Friday, so the room's questions aren't your first hard ones.
Claude makes a fine skeptic when you ask it to be one. Run this against your own build before anyone else sees it.
Here's my capstone system: [paste your Project instructions + skill]. Act as a skeptical teammate: ask me the three questions that would expose where it breaks.
Nobody takes attendance and nothing is graded. We are stronger when learning together.
Review it like a builder
The 4Ds have been habits for six weeks; this week they become your review rubric, one question per D.
Delegation
Does the right work flow to the system? The workflow you picked should be one you actually run, handed over at a size Claude can carry.
Description
Could a teammate read your instructions cold and predict the output? If they'd be surprised by what comes back, the writing has gaps.
Discernment
Do you check the output against its sources on every run? A system you trust blindly is a system you've stopped managing.
Diligence
Is every piece of standing context checked, dated, and owned? Standing context is the biggest container you've built, so the gate matters most here.
This is your own check that the build landed. It stays in your browser — nobody else sees it.
Under the hood
Skip it and lose nothing. Three questions builders usually ask this week.
Why is "works twice in a row" the bar?
One clean run can ride on a lucky input: notes that happened to match your worked example, or a gap Claude happened to fill well. A second clean run on fresh material shows the method carried the output, and the method is the thing you're actually shipping. Week 8 raises the same bar one more notch, with a teammate at the keyboard instead of you.
Why does the teammate test matter so much?
When you run your own system, everything you forgot to write down rides along in your head and quietly fills the window's gaps. A teammate carries none of it, so their run shows you exactly which context never made it into the instructions. Every place they stumble is a sentence you haven't written yet, which makes their confusion the cheapest editing pass you'll ever get.
What makes a capstone organization-level?
Someone else can pick it up and run it without you in the room. A tool that only works in your hands improved your own week, which is where this course started; a system with written instructions, dated files, a named owner, and a teammate who has already run it keeps working when you're out. That second kind changes how DC CAP operates, and it's what the Week 8 showcase looks for.