Uncommon Waters
Academy
← 101 BuildWeek 5 · Dec 7 – Dec 11

Someone else's project

run it, ship to it, evaluate it

Student gets a classmate's project running from its own docs, ships one improvement the owner merges, files an evaluation, and fixes the gaps their own evaluation found.

Monday · 90 minutes live

  1. 15′Frontier failure: a fresh agent with no context, dropped into a repo that only works on its author's laptop.
  2. 20′Reading someone else's project: README, AGENTS.md, PLAN.md, what env it needs. The evaluation rubric: does it run from the docs, are secrets handled, do the checks pass, what would I trust.
  3. 40′Hands on: clone your assigned classmate's repo (not your buddy). Fresh agent, no help from the owner. Get it running locally. Pick one issue the owner filed; open a PR.
  4. 15′Read-outs: one thing I will steal, one thing that would stop me trusting it.

Tuesday to Thursday · you build

  • Your PR merged into the classmate's repo, preview checked by the owner.
  • Evaluation filed as an issue in their repo, on the rubric.
  • Fix your own project from the evaluation you received: README, AGENTS.md, env docs.

Office hours · two 30-minute blocks

  1. 1Tuesday: projects that will not start; what the docs left out.
  2. 2Thursday: PRs the owner will not merge, and why.

Exam whisper · five minutes of vocabulary

Anthropic AI Fluency second half, sit the certificate. Register for the paid exam. Exam Whisper: bias and fairness, copyright/IP, disclosure, and when not to use AI.