Capstone — Ship Something Real

Ship something real. The Creator capstone isn’t a design doc — it’s a working, public, AI-assisted project with documentation.

Scope — pick one

1. A tool.A web app, CLI, or bot that solves a real problem for a real person you know. Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s API, or a local Ollama model are all fine.
2. A dataset or analysis. A curated dataset, a bias audit of an existing model, or an evaluation of which model handles your specialty best.
3. A piece of media. A short film made with Sora/Runway, a podcast episode produced with AI tools, an illustrated book with human text + AI illustrations. Document the process honestly.
4. A teaching artifact. A lesson, tutorial, or explanatory video for someone younger than you. Teaching solidifies understanding.

Requirements

• Public on the internet — GitHub repo, YouTube video, personal blog, whatever.
• A 1000-word README covering: problem, approach, what AI did vs. what you did, what went wrong, what you’d do differently.
• A 2-minute demo video.
• A statement of AI use. Which models, which prompts/tools, which parts of the output you kept vs. heavily edited.

Judging criteria

• Specificity. Real user, real problem, real decision you made.
• Honest AI use. No pretending the machine wrote it all, or that you did.
• Craft. Did you iterate? Does the final artifact show care?
• Ethics awareness. What could go wrong? What did you build in to prevent it?

What success looks like

When a college admissions officer, an employer, or a curious adult looks at your capstone in three years, they should see: this person thinks clearly about AI, builds real things, and takes responsibility for the craft and the ethics. That’s the signal. That’s the whole thing.

When you’re done

Submit the link. The Tendril Creator badge is yours, and your project joins the public capstone gallery (if you opt in). You’re done with the curriculum. You know more about how AI actually works than 95% of the adults in your life. Congratulations.