Get Clear First
Before you write a line of code, get clear on what you are building. Most wasted effort on a project comes from a fuzzy goal — not from bad code.
Four Questions
A vague idea becomes a clear goal when you can answer these four honestly.
- Who is it for? — name the person who will actually use it
- What problem does it solve? — the one thing it makes better
- What does it NOT do? — the scope, drawn on purpose
- How will you know it works? — the sign it is doing its job
Must-Haves vs Nice-to-Haves
Separate what the tool must do from what would merely be nice. A small, sharp scope ships; a big, vague one stalls.
Write the Finish Line
In one or two concrete sentences, describe the finished tool doing its job.
- It names the user, the action, and the result you can see
- It is specific enough that you could test it
- If you cannot write “done,” you are not ready to build yet
Smaller Than You Think
Build the smallest version that is actually useful. It teaches you the most, the fastest — and feeds straight into the iterate loop from Module 1.
Build It
How to implement: write three lines for your capstone — who it is for, the one problem it solves, and what “done” looks like.
- Weekly AI Tasks tracker — for me; turns a WhatsApp message into a tracked task; done when a text adds or updates a task I can see in the week view.
- Personal brand site — for recruiters; shows my projects and skills truthfully; done when every claim links to real evidence.
What you learned
Get the goal clear before the code: who, what problem, what it is not, how you will know. Cut to the must-haves, write “done,” and start smaller than you think.