Check Your Capstone Idea

Get the shape right before you start building

Over the next six sessions you will build a working AI agent as a team. You choose the idea now, and it grows with you — each session adds a layer to what you already have.

Because it has to survive all six sessions, what matters is not how impressive the idea sounds. It is whether it is the right shape. A modest idea of the right shape will carry you through. An ambitious idea of the wrong shape will stall in Session 5.

Six tests. Run your idea through these as a team before you start.

The Removal Test — Hand the job to a capable new employee with your documents and your rules, but no AI. Could they do it perfectly by following the rules? Then your idea does not need AI. You want a job where they would have to read the situation each time.

The Two People Test — Two people use it on the same morning with different situations. Do they get meaningfully different answers? If everyone gets the same answer, you have a document, not a solution.

The Chat Window Test — Everything happens by typing. Your team uploads documents once, while building. The person using it uploads nothing — no photos, no PDFs, no spreadsheets. If your idea depends on the AI seeing something, redesign it so the user describes it.

The One Job Test — One job, done well, for one kind of person. Not “an AI for HR” — an AI that handles a specific cluster of situations. Teams reliably pick something too big, and then finish nothing.

The Made-Up Data Test — You must be able to invent everything it needs to know. Write your own sample policies and procedures — realistic, but not real. If it only works with live system access or sign-off from IT, you will spend the programme waiting.

The Trouble Test — Name three situations where it would struggle. Can’t think of three? Too simple. All three impossible to handle? Too hard.

It takes about eight minutes. There is no score and no pass mark. If the shape is wrong, it will show you the nearest version that works and carry on from there — most teams leave with a project different from the one they walked in with. That is the design, not a setback.

You get a written statement of your project and a table to paste into Miro Board.