# Capstone milestones

2026-10-08 · https://fsgeek.ca/teaching/cpsc-416-winter-2025-term-2/capstone-milestones/

The capstone is worth **45%** and is evaluated via milestones. The intent is to reduce single-deadline risk and to provide multiple feedback/intervention points.

## Teams and artifacts

  * **Teams:** up to 5 students.
  * **Deliverables:** both a group submission and an individual report.
  * **Evidence:** signed git history + AI interaction log + reproducible artifacts.
  * **Oral exam hooks (required structure):** maintain `oral-exam-hooks/hooks.md` as a compact index of claims, failure scenarios, and tradeoffs.
  * **Course GitHub organization:** <https://github.students.cs.ubc.ca/CPSC416-2025W-T2>



## Proposed milestone breakdown (sums to 45%)

  * 5%: Proposal + domain (or nomination) + MVP + risk register
  * 8%: Design spec (failure model → protocol → invariants) + review plan
  * 5%: Formal model/spec (TLA+/PlusCal preferred; alternatives allowed with justification)
  * 7%: Prototype checkpoint (end-to-end vertical slice; measurable behavior under at least one failure)
  * 5%: Failure evaluation (fault injection / adversarial scenarios + results + interpretation)
  * 10%: Final group submission (demo-ready repo + report + reproducibility package)
  * 5%: Individual report (what changed, what was learned, and what would be done next)



## Early exploration cadence (baseline)

In the prior offering, the capstone used short **individual weekly reports** early in the term to force exploration before students committed to a specific direction. Team declaration happened mid-stream. This offering preserves that intent via weekly reports and a team declaration deadline.

## Key dates (2026)

  * **Weekly reports:** due Thu at 11:30 PT (unlock after the previous report) through **2026-03-19**
  * **Team declaration:** 2026-02-12 23:59 PT
  * **Code submission:** 2026-03-27 23:59 PT
  * **Design reflection:** 2026-04-10 23:59 PT
  * **Final video/reflection:** 2026-04-24 23:59 PT