Capstone part 1: choose a task, design and test your initial prompt

The capstone in one sentence

Build a prompt toolkit for one real, appropriate task: an initial prompt, a tested and improved prompt (or small set of prompts), the outputs from both, and a clear explanation of what you changed and why it helped.

Read the full brief in the capstone project guide (resources) before you start.

Step 1 — Choose an appropriate task

Good capstone tasks are:

• Real — something you or your organisation actually needs (summarising reports, drafting customer replies, creating study questions, extracting data from forms, planning content).
• Repeatable — you would use the prompt more than once, with different inputs.
• Checkable — you can judge whether an output is good.
• Safe and legitimate — no personal or confidential data (use anonymised or fake inputs), nothing deceptive, harmful or against a policy that applies to you, and nothing that replaces qualified advice (medical, legal, financial).

Write a one-paragraph task statement: who uses the output, for what, and what "good" means.

Step 2 — Define success criteria and a rubric

List 4–6 observable criteria and turn them into a simple 0–2 rubric (Module 9). These criteria will be used to compare your initial and final prompts, so make them specific.

Step 3 — Prepare test inputs

Choose at least three inputs: two typical, one awkward (incomplete, unusually long, ambiguous). Use anonymised or fictional material. Keep the inputs fixed for the whole project — that is what makes your comparison fair.

Step 4 — Write and test the initial prompt

Write the prompt you would naturally have written before this course, or a quick first attempt. Run it on every test input (twice each if you can), and score each output with your rubric. Save the outputs — you will submit them.

Step 5 — Diagnose

For each weakness, note the likely cause in the prompt (Module 6 table). Choose the changes you will test tomorrow.

What to submit today

Use the exercise box to record your plan and baseline. You can include a link to a document if your work is long. Tomorrow you will improve, compare and submit the final project.