Skip to main content

Capstone: Your First Weeks Checklist

This is the graduation checklist for the Platform Foundations Track. Everything from Module 1 through Module 5 comes together here as a single onboarding run: not a simulation, but the actual first-week motions you'll repeat for real on your own projects.

Certificate on track completion

Completing the checklist below and passing its quiz completes the Platform Foundations Track. Check the Academy home for how your completion is recognized.

What "done" looks like​

By the end of this capstone you should be able to say, honestly:

  1. You cloned a real Wasteology repo and read its CLAUDE.md.
  2. You ran lat check in it and understand what passing (or failing) means.
  3. You opened a trivial, real pull request against it and saw its branch policies for yourself.
  4. You know how to find out who owns a given piece of the portfolio, instead of guessing or asking around blind.

Onboarding checklist​

Work through this in order — later steps assume you've done the earlier ones.

1. Clone a repo​

  • Pick a Wasteology repository — a real one you'll actually be working in, or a low-stakes one if you'd rather practice somewhere disposable first.
  • Clone it over HTTPS, authenticating with your PAT as covered in Module 3.
  • Open its CLAUDE.md and read it end to end. Note which Claude Project Standard tier's additions you can identify.

2. Ground yourself​

  • Confirm the repo has a lat.md/ directory. If it does, run lat search for something relevant to a task you expect to work on soon, and read the top result.
  • Run lat check and confirm it passes on the default branch. If it doesn't, that's worth flagging to the team rather than assuming it's fine.

3. Ship something trivial​

  • Create a branch, make a small, real, low-risk change (a typo fix, a comment clarification — anything genuinely harmless).
  • Push it using the PAT pattern from Module 3 (or /git-update if the repo provides it).
  • Open a PR with a real title and description.
  • Look at the PR's checks. Identify which are required — is lat check one of them? If the repo doesn't have it wired as required yet, note that too; it's useful information either way.
  • Get it reviewed and merged if it's genuinely trivial and you have the standing to do so — or close it once you've inspected the policy behavior, if this was a dry run.

4. Find who owns it​

  • Using what you learned in Module 1, find out who owns the repo you just worked in — via its CLAUDE.md, the orchestration repo's project registry, or asking your onboarding buddy to confirm your finding.
  • Note one thing about ownership you'd want to know before making a bigger change to this repo in the future (who to loop in for review, who to ask before changing shared infrastructure, etc.).

5. Reflect​

  • Write two or three sentences on what surprised you across these five modules, and one thing you'd tell a future new hire to pay closer attention to than you did.

Wastey says

The checkbox that matters most here isn't the certificate — it's step 3's merged (or genuinely inspected) PR. That's the actual motion you'll repeat every week from now on: ground yourself, make a change, let the gates do their job, get it reviewed. Everything else in this track was building up to that becoming routine.

Practice: order the onboarding checklist​

Put the capstone flow back in order — this is the exact sequence the diagram above walks through.

Put these onboarding capstone steps in the right order:Put in order
1Push + open a PR
2Find who owns this project
3Inspect its branch policies
4Make a trivial change
5Run lat check
6Reflect
7Pick a repo
8Clone it, read CLAUDE.md

Knowledge check​

Before making a change to an unfamiliar repo, what should you do first per this track?
If a PR's checks pass but lat check is not configured as a required status on that repo, what does that mean?
How should you determine who owns a repo, rather than guessing?

Your certificate​

Complete every module (and pass its knowledge check) plus this capstone to earn your Platform Foundations certificate. It appears here automatically the moment the track is complete — print it or save it as a PDF.

Checking your progress…