teaching-phd-skills

Why this exists

An agent with filesystem access is fast, confident, and wrong often enough to matter — and a research repo is the most expensive place for that combination, because a plausible edit to an analysis script produces plausible numbers. The skill being assessed is not prompting. It is bounding the task and reading the diff, which are the two things that make the speed safe.

External material

Claude Code documentation. It covers operation — what the tool can do, how to run it. It does not rule on what a research repo should let an agent touch, which is a question the standard answers and the documentation cannot.

Governing part

Whatever governs the files it touches. Parts 1–2 for src/, Part 3 for notebooks/, and Part 4 rules on the boundary between them. An agent does not get an exemption from the Part that governs the directory it is editing.

The mechanic

1. Write the task in one sentence before you start. If it takes two sentences, it is two tasks and you should do the first one.
2. Work on a branch. Always.
3. Read every line of the diff before accepting it. Not skim — read. This is the step people skip and it is the entire safeguard.
4. Record what it got wrong. Not what it got right; you will remember that. The failure is the data.

The honest outcome of this exercise is sometimes “it was faster to do it myself.” Report that if it happens — it is a finding about the boundary of the tool, and it is worth more than a success.

Deliverable

Transcript excerpt plus the diff you accepted, in that week’s WA entry.

Competency check

• Task stated in one sentence, timestamped before the session
• Work done on a branch, not the default branch
• The full diff is shown and was reviewed line by line
• At least one thing the agent got wrong is recorded
• Whatever check the repo already has (tests, an agreement assertion) still passes after the merge

Turning it in

This replaces your arithmetic entry for the week you do it. Submit it to that week’s WA assignment in Canvas — the same one you would have submitted anyway. It is not an extra piece of work on top of the log.

• In the text box: the one-sentence task, what it got wrong, and whether it actually saved time.
• You hand in: A transcript excerpt plus the diff you accepted, with your one-sentence task statement timestamped before the session began

You do not submit anything to the milestone yet. When all four skills in M2 are done, submit the M2 — Reproducible Code assignment, which is just an index saying which week each one went in.

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