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Day 89: Corrections, Partial-Failure Feedback & the Agent-Assisted Engineering Check

Convert Day 88 misses into verified corrections, then complete one bounded delegated task on the capstone agent project — keeping assisted evidence strictly separate.

Agents and Agentic Workflows 480 active minutes (8 hours)
01 120 min

Partial-Failure Taxonomy and the Correction Protocol

Agent-Assisted Engineering Check

Prerequisites

Day 88 score sheet and unmet-criteria ledger.

Learning Objective

Classify every sub-2 rubric item into concept_gap, slip, ambiguity, or evidence_gap, and apply the five-step correction protocol: restate, locate, minimal reproduction, fix, retest.

Instructions

1. The four miss types and their signatures:
- concept_gap: you could not produce the method at all (e.g., could not set up the chain rule). Routes to the mapped recovery day — restudy then attempt a NEW variant task.
- slip: method correct, arithmetic/detail wrong (e.g., sign error, off-by-one). Retest the same task; no full recovery day needed.
- ambiguity: the task wording was unclear. Record the unclear wording and resolve it before retesting.
- evidence_gap: answer correct but no verifying command run. Produce the command output; no restudy needed.
2. The correction protocol, applied to each ledger row: (a) restate the task in your own words; (b) locate the exact point of failure; (c) build the smallest reproduction that shows the failure; (d) fix exactly that point — nothing else; (e) retest and record the verifying output.
3. Feedback quality rule: every self-comment must cite the rubric criterion that failed, not just state 'wrong'. Example: 'PY-1 failed criterion tie-order: most_common returned insertion order; fix = sort by (-count, word)'.
4. Decide per row: full recovery day (concept_gap) versus 20-minute targeted review (slip, evidence_gap).

Practice & Prediction Log

Produce corrections_plan.json: every Day-88 ledger row annotated with miss_type, the failed rubric criterion, the correction step taken, and the retest command or task variant.

Independent Mastery Criterion

Every failed item carries a miss_type, the failed rubric criterion, a correction step, and a retest plan — classified honestly.

Authoritative Source Resources & Provenance

linking Journal publisher copyright (all rights reserved) - lawful external linking only

Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology

Author: John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, Daniel T. Willingham | Original Source Link ↗

Relevant Section / Range: Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14(1): 4-58; practice testing and distributed practice sections

Verified Version & Date: Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2013 (Verified: 2026-10-30)

Selection Rationale:

Detailed comparative review rating practice testing and distributed practice as high-utility techniques while rating highlighting and rereading low-utility; anchors the retrieval, correction, and spaced-review design of Days 88-90.

Source Prerequisites:

None beyond general academic reading.

Safe Fallback (Offline Resilience):

Curriculum restates the utility ratings and application conditions in original prose; every task remains runnable offline.

Compared Candidate Sources & Selection Analysis (2)
Pashler et al. Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence ↗ compared_alternative [Publisher copyright (originally Wiley; now SAGE Publications)]

Important negative result on learning-styles matching but narrower scope; Dunlosky et al. rates a broader set of techniques directly usable for this curriculum.

Brown, Roediger & McDaniel: Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning ↗ compared_alternative [Publisher copyright (Harvard University Press)]

Strong trade-book synthesis of the same evidence base; the peer-reviewed review is preferred for citation precision and technique-by-technique utility ratings.

linking PSF License Version 2

Python Standard Library: Built-in Exceptions

Author: Python Software Foundation | Original Source Link ↗

Relevant Section / Range: Concrete exceptions and Exception hierarchy

Verified Version & Date: Python 3.12 (Verified: 2026-10-30)

Selection Rationale:

Normative exception hierarchy used to justify the narrowest correct except clause and FileNotFoundError attributes such as filename and errno.

Source Prerequisites:

Basic Python syntax from Study Days 01-09

Safe Fallback (Offline Resilience):

The drill reproduces FileNotFoundError and ValueError locally, and help(ValueError) documents the hierarchy offline.

Compared Candidate Sources & Selection Analysis (2)
W3Schools Python Exceptions ↗ compared_rejected_for_days10_12 [Proprietary]

Beginner-friendly but non-normative; omits the OSError attributes and hierarchy precision the diagnosis drills require.

Broader class-oriented chapter; the dedicated exceptions reference is the tighter fit for reading and diagnosing concrete error types during debugging checks.

02 120 min

Targeted Correction and Retest (Unaided)

Independent Mastery Check (no AI assistance).

Prerequisites

Day 89 Activity 1 corrections plan; assistance condition: independent.

Learning Objective

Rework every failed Day-88 task under the same unaided conditions, verify corrections with runnable commands, and rescore honestly — before/after, not overwritten.

Instructions

1. For each concept_gap row: first complete the mapped recovery activity, then attempt a fresh VARIANT task — not the identical item, so the retest measures transfer rather than memorized answers.
2. For each slip row: re-attempt the original task and diff the two attempts.
3. Verification commands you must run and record: gradient answers → two-sided finite difference (f(x+h) − f(x−h))/(2h) with h=1e-5 in float64; git sequences → execute on a disposable clone and show git log --oneline; Python functions → python -m unittest -v; parameter counts → recompute and diff against projects/pretrain/artifacts/run_artifact.json.
4. Log corrections.jsonl — one record per retested item: {task_id, before, after, verify_command, verified: true|false}.
5. Items still below 2 stay below 2 — record the named recovery route; never silently upgrade.

Practice & Prediction Log

Emit corrections.jsonl covering every Day-88 ledger row, each with before/after scores and the actual verification output captured.

Independent Mastery Criterion

Every retested item is either corrected and command-verified or explicitly still-unmet with a named recovery route — nothing silently upgraded.

Authoritative Source Resources & Provenance

linking MIT

CS231n: Backpropagation and Intuitions

Author: Andrej Karpathy / Stanford University | Original Source Link ↗

Relevant Section / Range: Patterns in backward flow

Verified Version & Date: Course notes (Verified: 2026-10-30)

Selection Rationale:

Modular local-gradient interpretation (gate operations: add, multiply, max) and gradient flow intuition.

Source Prerequisites:

Multivariable calculus and basic Python.

Safe Fallback (Offline Resilience):

Local gate definitions and circuit flow diagrams in the lesson provide full coverage.

Compared Candidate Sources & Selection Analysis (2)

Raw circuit view; CS231n notes are more structured with explicit gate derivations.

Fast.ai Practical Deep Learning for Coders ↗ compared_alternative [GPL-3.0]

Top-down approach; CS231n bottom-up modular view matches our first-principles curriculum.

linking CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 noncommercial share-alike

Pro Git, Second Edition

Author: Scott Chacon and Ben Straub | Original Source Link ↗

Relevant Section / Range: Chapter 3 Git Branching and Section 7.7 Reset Demystified

Verified Version & Date: Second edition (Apress, 2014) (Verified: 2026-10-30)

Selection Rationale:

Freely licensed reference for branching, merging, conflict resolution, and safe recovery vocabulary used on Day 14.

Source Prerequisites:

Basic git status/log/diff vocabulary from earlier study days

Safe Fallback (Offline Resilience):

git help <command> and the Git manual pages ship with Git and cover the same commands offline; every required workflow is stated locally in the lesson.

Compared Candidate Sources & Selection Analysis (2)
GitHub Skills interactive courses ↗ compared_rejected_for_day14 [MIT (varies by course)]

Interactive but requires a GitHub account and an external service; disposable local repositories keep the exercise self-contained.

Atlassian Git Tutorials ↗ compared_rejected_for_day14 [All Rights Reserved]

Vendor-owned prose with no permissive license; Pro Git covers the same ground under CC BY-NC-SA.

03 120 min

Agent-Assisted Engineering Check: A Bounded Delegation Task on the Capstone Agent

Agent-Assisted Engineering Check

Prerequisites

Day 89 Activity 2; assistance condition: agent_assisted. This is an Agent-Assisted Engineering Check — its evidence never converts to independent mastery.

Learning Objective

Demonstrate competent agent direction on the capstone project: write a bounded spec with acceptance criteria and permission scope, apply the change on a disposable branch, review the diff for scope violations, run the deterministic evaluation, and record an honest outcome.

Instructions

1. Choose ONE bounded task on projects/agent_learning, e.g., add a --json output flag to the scorer CLI, or extend the summarize-notes fixture with one additional note.
2. Write the spec BEFORE delegating: goal, files the agent may touch (e.g., cli.py and one test file), acceptance criteria (python -m unittest tests.projects.test_agent_learning passes; new flag emits valid JSON), and stop conditions.
3. Apply the agent's patch on a disposable branch (git checkout -b delegated-task inside your own clone or a scratch copy); never on the protected working tree.
4. Diff review checklist: no files outside the declared scope; no network calls added; no secrets or credentials; tests actually exercise the new behavior; error paths preserved.
5. Run verification: the project's own test/eval command plus your acceptance checks. Record: spec text, files changed, diff-review notes, verify command and its output, agent iterations needed, and your verdict (accepted / accepted-with-fixes / rejected).

Practice & Prediction Log

Emit assisted_check.json: {spec, files_changed[], diff_review_notes, verify_command, verify_output_summary, agent_iterations, verdict}.

Independent Mastery Criterion

Complete one delegated task end-to-end with inspected diff, verified test run, honest iteration count, and a justified verdict — labelled as assisted evidence.

Authoritative Source Resources & Provenance

linking Open Access / CC BY 4.0

ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models

Author: Shunyu Yao, Jeffrey Zhao, Dian Yu, Nan Du, Izhak Shafran, Karthik Narasimhan, Yuan Cao | Original Source Link ↗

Relevant Section / Range: Section 3 & 4 (ReAct Formulation and Synergy)

Verified Version & Date: ICLR 2023 / arXiv:2210.03629v2 (Verified: 2026-10-30)

Selection Rationale:

Foundational academic paper introducing the interleaved Thought-Action-Observation control loop in LLM agents, establishing formal interleaving of task reasoning and external tool execution.

Source Prerequisites:

Prompt engineering, token generation basics, and conversational interaction loops.

Safe Fallback (Offline Resilience):

Complete algorithmic step traces, state loop diagrams, and control loop pseudocode are self-contained in curriculum materials.

Compared Candidate Sources & Selection Analysis (2)

Pure reasoning without environmental actions or external tool grounding; ReAct extends reasoning into an interactive environment action-observation loop.

Early neuro-symbolic modular router concept; ReAct offers simpler, prompting-native action-observation loop dynamics suitable for standard API models.

linking Open Access / CC BY 4.0

SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?

Author: Carlos E. Jimenez, John Yang, Alexander Wettig, Shunyu Yao, Kexin Pei, Ofir Press, Karthik R. Narasimhan | Original Source Link ↗

Relevant Section / Range: Section 2.1 Benchmark Construction and Section 2.2 Task Formulation (FAIL_TO_PASS tests)

Verified Version & Date: ICLR 2024 / arXiv:2310.06770v3 (Verified: 2026-10-30)

Selection Rationale:

Defines the standard pattern this block teaches: a bounded issue statement paired with executable fail-to-pass tests as verifiable acceptance criteria for agent-produced changes.

Source Prerequisites:

Unit testing, issue descriptions, and repository evaluation vocabulary.

Safe Fallback (Offline Resilience):

The acceptance-criteria pattern is exercised locally through the Ticket 22 fixture scorer and the Ticket 24 regression exercise without external datasets.

Compared Candidate Sources & Selection Analysis (2)
HumanEval: Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code ↗ compared_alternative [arXiv non-exclusive license / Open Access]

Function-level synthesis benchmark; SWE-bench models the repository-scoped issue-to-diff workflow that this delivery block rehearses.

Multi-SWE-bench: A Multilingual Benchmark for Issue Resolving ↗ compared_alternative [Open Access / CC BY 4.0]

Extends issue resolution to multiple programming languages; the original Python-centric SWE-bench provides a cleaner pedagogical anchor.

04 120 min

Review: Remediation Ledger Closure and Honest Score Update

Independent Mastery Check (no AI assistance).

Prerequisites

Day 89 Activities 1-3 complete.

Learning Objective

Close the loop: update the mastery ledger with corrected before/after results, keep still-unmet items visibly unmet, and file assisted evidence in a separate column that never feeds independent scores.

Instructions

1. Merge score sheets: for every domain write before/after totals from the Day-88 sheet and today's retests.
2. Items still scoring <2 carry forward into the Day-90 next-learning plan with their named recovery routes — they remain visibly unmet.
3. Record the Activity-3 verdict in a separate assisted_evidence column labelled Agent-Assisted Engineering Check; it documents delegation skill, never unaided knowledge.
4. Write the final evidence note: which artifacts are command-verified (independent) versus self-reported or assisted; list the exact commands that produced verification.
5. Emit mastery_ledger.json: per-domain before/after, remaining gaps with recovery routes, independent_evidence list, assisted_evidence list, and an honest scope statement.

Practice & Prediction Log

Produce mastery_ledger.json with all sections populated; assisted results appear only under assisted_evidence.

Independent Mastery Criterion

Final ledger honestly separates independent and assisted evidence, keeps unmet criteria visibly unmet, and states scope truthfully.

Authoritative Source Resources & Provenance

linking Journal publisher copyright (all rights reserved) - lawful external linking only

Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention

Author: Henry L. Roediger III, Jeffrey D. Karpicke | Original Source Link ↗

Relevant Section / Range: Psychological Science 17(3): 249-255, Experiments 1-2

Verified Version & Date: Psychological Science, 2006 (Verified: 2026-10-30)

Selection Rationale:

Foundational experimental evidence that retrieval practice (testing) outperforms repeated study for long-term retention; grounds the Day 88 AI-free retrieval checks in peer-reviewed learning science rather than folk advice.

Source Prerequisites:

Basic understanding of study sessions, retention intervals, and experimental design vocabulary.

Safe Fallback (Offline Resilience):

The curriculum restates the experimental design and effect sizes in original prose; every sealed task runs without the paper.

Compared Candidate Sources & Selection Analysis (2)

Strong meta-analytic coverage of spacing effects but addresses scheduling rather than the retrieval effect itself; retained as support for the Day 90 spaced-review schedule.

Equally foundational follow-up demonstrating repeated retrieval vs repeated study; the 2006 paper is cited as the standard first controlled demonstration.

linking CC BY 4.0

The Turing Way: A Handbook for Reproducible, Ethical and Collaborative Data Science

Author: The Turing Way Community | Original Source Link ↗

Relevant Section / Range: Reproducible Research chapter: version control, testing, environment capture

Verified Version & Date: Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.3233853, continuously updated (Verified: 2026-10-30)

Selection Rationale:

Community-maintained CC-BY handbook codifying reproducibility checklists (versioned code, environment capture, rerunnable commands); directly defines the Day 90 reproduction-verification and provenance-audit workflow.

Source Prerequisites:

Basic version control and command-line familiarity.

Safe Fallback (Offline Resilience):

The portfolio checklist and verification log schema are authored locally; reproduction commands run without the handbook.

Compared Candidate Sources & Selection Analysis (2)

Concise practices paper; The Turing Way's maintained, checklist-driven coverage of environments and reproducibility is broader and kept current.

Foundational rules list; The Turing Way expands the same rules into actionable checklists used verbatim for the Day 90 verification run.