C8 · Week 9: It's alive!
The final project starts here, and the bar is proof of life.
it’s alive! ship the first working version of your final project, and a first go at saying what good means for it
The final project brief has been out since week 8; proof of life means your project deployed on Fly, doing its core thing for a stranger, with a trace that’s still there when they come back. The feature list, the real-time layer and the polish can all wait. The spec checks for signs of life, so the crit mark reads this week’s exercise and passes no verdict on your in-flight final project.
The README is the crit’s real material. The brief asks what would make your app
good, which settles what it should do and how well
(why). Write a first version of what
good means for your app, in README.md, with what you read or looked at while
deciding: the brief’s notes on good point at the
small web, games for a handful of friends and tools built for one workshop. The
template already serves the file at /readme/, so your pod reads it before they
use the app, and then tells you whether the app lives up to it. A first version
is meant to be rough, and it should change as you build; the /ship tags keep
each version, and the changes between them are process evidence.
Getting it live means choosing a stack, and PROCESS.md says why. A
decision record
is a good place for the trade-offs. It’s a first choice: if the app outgrows it,
switch, and write a new record saying why.
Start from the smallest schema that can carry the core interaction. From here to submission you’re working in the one repo, and it goes public at this week’s cutoff and stays public.
The spec
The brief on this page poses the problem and leaves room for your response. The spec is the fixed contract: what your tutor considers when judging whether that response meets the requirements. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for human judgement.
- the app is deployed at its *.fly.dev URL by the cutoff
- it's alive: a stranger can visit, do the core thing, and find their trace still there when they come back
- a first version of what good means for this app is in README.md and published at /readme/, and you can say what you read or looked at to get there
- the repo goes public at the cutoff and stays public
- the repo shows the process — commits that grew with the work, a process overview in PROCESS.md, and the week's reflection in reflections/crit-8.md
- you can account for how you directed, grounded and corrected the work