Research before building. This lesson is about finding repos worth studying, creating a PRD, and setting up your workspace so Claude knows what you're building from the start. The PRD isn't bureaucracy. It's how you give Claude persistent memory across sessions. Where are you at?

🎟️ PRIZE: FREE SEAT IN THE LYCEUM 🎟️ Pick your cohort. Technical, Business, or Creator. Your call. 📋 THE CHALLENGE Build a folder-based AI diagnostician that reads something broken and tells you WHY it's broken. Not how to fix it. Why it failed. This week's deliverable is one diagnostician folder that someone could drop into a Claude project and use to figure out why something in their world isn't working. 🎯PICK YOUR DOMAIN The domain is yours. Pick something specific. Pick a failure you've actually seen happen. A few sparks to get you thinking: - 📉 Why a landing page isn't converting - 📧 Why cold emails to a specific buyer aren't getting replies - 📋 Why a product spec keeps getting pushed back by engineering - 📄 Why a resume isn't getting callbacks in a specific industry - 🚪 Why users drop off at one step of an onboarding flow - 💸 Why a pricing page isn't converting trials - 🎥 Why a YouTube video underperformed the channel average - 🤝 Why a sales deal stalled after the demo - 📱 Why an app's retention craters in week two The more specific, the better. "Diagnoses marketing problems" is too broad. "Diagnoses why cold emails to enterprise IT buyers get opened but never answered" is right. 🗂️THE METHODOLOGY If this is your first comp, welcome. Here's what you need to know: This week (and every week) you're learning interpretable context methodology. Folders as architecture. Each file does one job well. Your diagnostician is a folder with five things: - 📄 identity.md (who the diagnostician is, what they diagnose) - 📐 rules.md (how they diagnose: what they look at, how they separate cause from symptom) - 💬 examples.md (2-3 example diagnoses showing the reasoning) - 📚 reference/ (common failure modes, diagnostic frameworks, benchmarks) - 📖 README.md (how to use it, what to feed it) Drop the folder into a Claude project. Claude becomes the diagnostician. Reusable. Shareable. Portable. 🔥 THE ANGLE THIS WEEK A diagnostician is NOT an editor. Last comp was The Editor. That one critiques craft. It looks at a draft and says "this part is weak, go fix it."

So, weird question that I was thinking about today... pre-question, how do local LLM's work? are they open source, loaded on your computer and you can alter the code? if that is the case, can you 'take off the guardrails'? it's not that I am wanting to do this, but what is stopping it from happening? Thoughts?

Like Wordle but for practicing your ICM fundamentals! Only a couple minutes a day to sort out a basic ICM workflow. Go fix the folder structure then share your score below and see how the community did in the stats! https://donsbookshelf.com/icmadness/

The week's editor competition has been been, i wanted to go through the comments to learn from other peoples work but 174 comments read was much for my attention span 😀. So i decided to build a compilation of the submissions and share here. Hope you find it as helpful as me. 1. @Ron Rath - GitHub Link: https://github.com/ronrath/engt581-artifact-editor - Link: https://www.skool.com/cliefnotes/weekly-comp-9-the-editor?p=3548224b - What it does: The Review Gate is an artifact editor designed for ENGT 58100, a graduate AI-in-manufacturing course at Purdue. Built using the ICM methodology, it acts as a human review gate for the course's own student submissions. It evaluates weekly artifacts such as cited workplace briefs, annotated bibliographies, AI workflows, and capstone projects to ensure they meet course standards. 2. @Toby Iverson - GitHub Link: https://github.com/BytesFromToby/for-the-record - Link: https://www.skool.com/cliefnotes/weekly-comp-9-the-editor?p=3548224b - What it does: "For the Record" is an objective editing tool designed to help individuals prepare oral testimony for city councils, school boards, or zoning hearings. It helps users stay on time and focused when delivering emotionally charged or frustrating public speeches. The editor reviews draft testimony to ensure the message remains clear, concise, and impactful within strict time limits. 3. @Natalee Champlin - GitHub Link: https://github.com/nataleechamplin/the-constraint-editor - Link: https://www.skool.com/cliefnotes/weekly-comp-9-the-editor?p=f5ad4805