Work out whether it is true, and what follows from it.

Find the thing and say where it is. No claim about whether it holds.

• 8locate a claim in its primary source

  Proof: A claim traced to its source with the section named, including one case where the source turned out to be weaker than the claim made from it.

  Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power · next Sep 14 Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11 Research & Activism · every week

• 8locate the devices a passage uses on you

  Proof: One passage you like with at least five devices marked in the text, each named, and each tied to the reaction it produced in you.

  Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11

• 8locate the standard that governs a system you are building

  Proof: One system, the governing instrument named, and the specific requirement it places on you.

  AI Security: Governance, Standards and Safety Cases

• 8name an audience and its success criterion

  Proof: A written audience statement naming who they are, what they are trying to do, and the observable event that means it worked.

  Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power · next Sep 14 Practical Propaganda · next Sep 19 Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing

Execute a given procedure and read the result off it.

• 8run a model analysis against a hand check

  Proof: The dataset, the model's analysis, and your own computation of one figure alongside it, agreeing or with the discrepancy explained.

  Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power · next Sep 14

Make an artifact that did not exist, to a stated standard.

• 9produce a budget for work whose timeline you have observed

  Proof: The completion gate answered out loud, and either a budget built on an observed timeline or a scoped first run with a defined end and a showable output.

  Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0) Founding Federation: Build With Your Heart First

• 9produce a function whose result depends on program state

  Proof: The function, two call sites that do not know about each other, and two runs of the same call producing different results with the state that caused each difference named.

  The Interactive Fiction Intensive · next Aug 29

• 9produce a list of where untrusted input enters a system

  Proof: An enumerated list against a real codebase or system, including one entry point that is not an obvious form field.

  Agentic SDLC · next Sep 7 Blue Team Common Certification Agentic AI Security: Securing What You Build

• 9produce a rubric a model can apply

  Proof: The rubric plus two independent gradings of the same three outputs, with the scores side by side.

  Prompt Engineering AI Alignment · next Sep 25 Custom GPTs Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11

• 9produce a threat model for your own situation

  Proof: Your own tier model, naming the adversary and capability at each tier, with the specific practice each tier changes.

  Field Opsec

• 9produce an account of an audiences current workaround

  Proof: Three accounts in the audience's own words naming the tool or habit they use now, and the moment in it that costs them something.

  Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing

• 9produce an account of the gap between ideals and operating values

  Proof: All 35 values placed in ranked bands; one value you would have claimed as an ideal and ranked low, with the constraint that put it there; one pair you could not honestly order against each other; and the top band loaded into the assistant you actually use.

  Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11

• 9produce an account of what you depend on and who can revoke it

  Proof: A written dependency inventory naming the party who controls each item and the consequence of losing it, including one you cannot replace.

  Keep It Running

• 9produce an explanation that survives a hostile reading

  Proof: The explanation, a hostile reading of it written by someone else, and the revision that closed the opening without softening the claim.

  Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power · next Sep 14 Practical Propaganda · next Sep 19

• 9produce an inventory of what you pay for and what it holds

  Proof: Your own list: tool, monthly cost, what of yours it holds, and whether you could get that out today.

  Intro to Open Source Software · next Sep 12

• 9produce an itemised bill for what your running system costs

  Proof: Last month's actual charges split per service, the two lines that grew fastest, and the one you could not explain until you went looking.

  Keep It Running

• 9produce the three numbers your life costs

  Proof: Three monthly figures traced to a bank statement or budget, with health insurance costed at what it would actually cost you.

  Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)

• 9segment text into tokens and cost it

  Proof: A token count for a real document, with the resulting cost and the fraction of the model's context window it occupies.

  Context Engineering · next Sep 16 Control AI Spending · next Sep 12 Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11

Work a mechanism whose behavior depends on something you set earlier.

• 9operate a model as a first pass editor

  Proof: A redlined draft showing which of the model's edits you took and which you refused, with the standard each decision was made against.

  Using Large Language Models Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11

• 9operate a recorded decision so a later branch depends on it

  Proof: A value written at one point and read at a point far enough away that the two are not visible together, two runs differing only in that decision, and the place the difference becomes visible.

  The Interactive Fiction Intensive · next Aug 29

• 9operate named states instead of magic numbers

  Proof: The named state set, the code that moves between states, and one transition the naming made you notice that a number would have hidden.

  The Interactive Fiction Intensive · next Aug 29

• 9operate state so a branching story neither explodes nor rails

  Proof: One story shown to fail both ways and then fixed with state, with the variable that does the work named.

  The Interactive Fiction Intensive · next Aug 29

Take one representation and turn it into a more useful one.

• 9transform a linear story into chained diamonds

  Proof: Three diamonds chained, with the trunk demonstrably reading differently depending on state carried through them.

  The Interactive Fiction Intensive · next Aug 29

• 9transform naive hours into billable capacity

  Proof: Naive hours, hours after overhead, and hours after fill rate, with the binding constraint named — for most people deal flow, not hours.

  Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)

Say how a thing behaves — its modes, its edges, what it costs.

• 10characterise a models failure modes

  Proof: A table of failure modes, each with the input that reproduces it and the output it produced, reproducible by a second person.

  Prompt Engineering AI Alignment · next Sep 25

• 10characterise a plans weaknesses with adversarial review

  Proof: The plan, the reviewer briefs, the raised objections, and your own ruling on each with the ones you rejected and why.

  Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11

• 10characterise an applications injection surface

  Proof: A written surface map for a real application naming the query, template or shell interpreter behind each entry point.

  Agentic SDLC · next Sep 7 Blue Team Common Certification Agentic AI Security: Securing What You Build

• 10characterise how a claim degrades as it is retold

  Proof: A chain of at least three retellings collected in the wild, with the point of inversion identified and what caused it.

  Practical Propaganda · next Sep 19

• 10characterise how a style works on a reader

  Proof: A written account of one author's mechanism, a passage by a different author correctly judged against it, and one passage the account fails to explain.

  Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11

• 10characterise how an ai assisted attack unfolded

  Proof: One documented incident traced end to end, with the model's contribution distinguished from what conventional tooling could already do.

  AI-Assisted Attacks: What Actually Happened

• 10characterise how your program behaves on paths you did not plan for

  Proof: Three traversals by deliberately different strategies, the state each ended in, at least one dead end or contradiction you did not know was there, and what you changed because of it.

  The Interactive Fiction Intensive · next Aug 29

• 10characterise what a tool costs you beyond its price

  Proof: One tool costed on all four axes, with the exit path named and the price of taking it.

  Intro to Open Source Software · next Sep 12

• 10characterise what breaks when you cut the connection

  Proof: A planned outage exercise with what was predicted beforehand, what actually failed, and the gap between the two.

  Keep It Running

• 10characterise what of a generated artifact you can defend as yours

  Proof: A generated passage with the defensible parts marked, each traced to your premise, your voice definition or your own history, and the parts you would not sign named as such.

  Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11

• 10characterise what one user costs you to serve

  Proof: A per-user cost with the fixed and variable halves separated, and the usage pattern of the one user who costs several times the median.

  Keep It Running

Sort real cases into categories and be right about the hard ones.

• 10classify a situation into the playbook it calls for

  Proof: Three situations routed to playbooks with the deciding tier named for each, including one where the alarming option was the wrong one.

  Field Opsec

• 10classify an incoming contact as genuine or pretext

  Proof: Five real examples classified with the tell named for each, including one genuine message that looked like a pretext.

  Digital Identity Defense · next Aug 26 Scam and Fraud Home Defense · next Nov 25

• 10classify where ai can fill a shape and where it must not choose one

  Proof: A scene three times longer after AI expansion with its shape intact, and one decision you refused to delegate, with the reason.

  The Interactive Fiction Intensive · next Aug 29

• 10classify which framework applies where you are in the lifecycle

  Proof: Three systems at different lifecycle stages, each routed to the framework that governs it, with the stage that decided it named.

  AI Security: Governance, Standards and Safety Cases

• 10classify which of your offerings can reach thrive not just survive

  Proof: Two or more candidate offerings costed to the same standard, with the one that cannot reach thrive identified and the reason named.

  Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)

Turn one worked instance into something that works on the next one.

• 10generalise a node build into your communitys system

  Proof: A deployed node serving a real group, with the failure each part absorbs named and the fallback stated for each. NOTE: the full DESIGN of a community information system would be order 12, and this class does not reach it — the chain computes to 10 and the capability validator says so. Workshop 5 is a showcase of what you built, not an architecture defended against alternatives. The order-11 rung (verifying the system survives a cut you did not choose) is unwritten.

  Solarpunk Automation · next Aug 22

• 10generalise a reasoning prompt pattern

  Proof: The pattern applied to three tasks with paired outputs against a plain prompt, plus one task where it made the output worse.

  Using Large Language Models Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11

• 10generalise a worked example into something you reuse

  Proof: Three runs whose inputs differ in shape rather than only in value, with no edit to the body between them, and the input that broke it before you handled it.

  The Interactive Fiction Intensive · next Aug 29

Work backwards from a constraint to the numbers that satisfy it.

• 10parameterise an offering backwards from its floor

  Proof: One offering with its price, the floor it clears, and the number of clients per month the arithmetic requires.

  Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)

Defend a choice with the measurement that decided it.

• 11falsify a prompt with a benchmark

  Proof: A benchmark file with graded cases, a run showing a non-zero failure rate, and a written account of which failures are the prompt's fault.

  Prompt Engineering AI Alignment · next Sep 25

• 11justify a hosting choice by cost per outcome

  Proof: A costed comparison over one month of real traffic, the outcome counted in each case, and the threshold at which the answer flips.

  Hosting Open-Source Models · next Sep 21

• 11justify a price when the buyer pushes back

  Proof: A price defended out loud in a real conversation or a rehearsal, with the objection raised and the number that answered it.

  Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)

• 11justify a safety case for a system that acts without you

  Proof: A written safety case for one autonomous system, with its falsifying condition stated and the evidence that would settle it.

  AI Security: Governance, Standards and Safety Cases

Show the check fails on the broken version and passes on the fixed one.

• 11verify a program does what you claimed with a test

  Proof: A test that is red on the broken version and green on the fixed one, run in both states.

  Agentic SDLC · next Sep 7

• 11verify a rubric against independent graders

  Proof: Two rubric versions, the adversarial inputs that forced the revision, and inter-grader agreement measured before and after.

  AI Alignment · next Sep 25 Custom GPTs

• 11verify an agents actions with a critic

  Proof: A run log containing at least one rejection and the revision that followed, plus a control run with the critic removed.

  Production Agent Engineering · next Sep 17

• 11verify model written code against its specification

  Proof: The diff, a review note per changed hunk, and a test run that is red on the parent commit and green on the child.

  Agentic SDLC · next Sep 7 Agentic AI Security: Securing What You Build

Try to break your own claim, and record what survived.

• 11falsify a blended voice by looking for its sources

  Proof: The voice written as instructions, a passage produced in it, at least three attempts by other readers to name its influences, and the one device you changed because it gave a source away.

  Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI · next Sep 11

Count what actually happened, not what people said happened.

• 11measure whether an explanation changed what people did

  Proof: A before-and-after behavioural measure, not a survey, and one instance of stated agreement with no behavioural change attached to it.

  Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power · next Sep 14 Practical Propaganda · next Sep 19

Choose a method, state what it trades away, and put it into use.

• 12design a recursive summariser for oversized documents

  Proof: A run over a document several times the context window, a fact list written beforehand, and the recall score of the output against it.

  Context Engineering · next Sep 16

• 12design a review gate that catches what the doer cannot see

  Proof: A gate in real use, a named error class it exists to catch, and one instance it caught that the author had already reviewed and passed.

  Agentic SDLC · next Sep 7

• 12design an interaction protocol for responsible use

  Proof: The written protocol, its implementation, and a log of at least one real interaction where it refused or escalated instead of answering.

  Custom GPTs

Compose a new mechanism out of parts that were not built to fit.

• 13synthesise a metalanguage for a problem domain

  Proof: The notation's grammar, a work produced in it that exceeds the context window, and a consistency check a reader runs to catch contradictions.

  Prompt Engineering

• 13synthesise a self extending agent behind a review gate

  Proof: A diff the agent authored to its own prompt or toolset, the benchmark run that accepted it, and a logged rejection with the reason recorded.

  Production Agent Engineering · next Sep 17

• 13synthesise an agent that carries notes across its own runs

  Proof: Paired runs of the same multi-step task with the note store kept and cleared, where the cleared run repeats a step the noted run skips, plus the note text the agent wrote and the later turn that cites it.

  Agentic SDLC · next Sep 7 RAG & Memory

Choose between competing designs and name what would reverse you.

• 13select among agent architectures

  Proof: A written comparison of at least two architectures on the same workload, with the measurements that decided it and the conditions that would reverse the decision.

  Production Agent Engineering · next Sep 17