Five questions before you continue.

Say the name of the person in your idea brief. Out loud. Full credit: first name, age, where you know them from. ("Sam, 14, mod on the Cubical Craft Discord server I'm on.") No credit: "well, kind of like..." or "people who..." or "users." Re-read Lesson 1 and rewrite the brief with one real person. ##

Tell yourself the exact moment you saw the person experience the pain. When was it. Where were they. What app was open. What did they say. Full credit: "Last Saturday, 2pm, she was on her laptop in the kitchen. She had CapCut open with a 90-minute Zoom recording. She scrubbed for 8 minutes trying to find a clip. She said 'this is so stupid' four separate times." No credit: "She gets frustrated with editing sometimes." That's a vibe, not a moment. Re-read Lesson 2 and do the watching exercise for an actual hour. ##

What does your customer use today to try to solve this problem? Name the tool, the app, the duct tape. Full credit: "CapCut plus a hand-edited Google Doc where she writes timestamps." Or "five different apps stitched together with a paper calendar she rewrites every Sunday." Specific. No credit: "Nothing." Or "they just deal with it." That's the Lesson 3 fake pattern #2 ringing. The pain isn't real enough for them to pay. Reconsider the candidate. ##

Describe your v1 in one sentence. Be honest. Could you actually build it in 4 weekends of part-time focused work? Full credit: small. A Notion template. A Chrome extension. A tiny webpage. A Discord bot that does one thing. "A single Notion dashboard that pulls 12 essay prompts into one view." That's a v1. No credit: the words "platform," "ecosystem," "users," "AI-powered," or stacking three features into one sentence. You're describing a v3. Re-read Lesson 4 and strip it. ##

Imagine someone asking: "Why are you building for [name] and not for a different person you know?" Answer in your own words. Full credit: you can name your reasoning. Reach. Frequency. Buildability. "I live with her. The pain hits her daily during apps season. I can ship the v1 in two weekends." That's a real answer. No credit: "I just thought it sounded interesting." Or "I don't really know." Re-read Lesson 4's constraint test. Verify your candidate scored at least 12 of 15. ## Your readout Count the full-credit answers. 5 of 5: Ready for Module 2. Mark Module 1 complete on the dashboard. Coach Lin is next, in Module 2. 4 of 5: Almost. Go back to whichever lesson the missing answer maps to. 30 more minutes. Come back. Re-take the checkpoint. 3 of 5 or lower: Not ready. Don't move on. The whole point of Module 1 is to NOT walk a half-finished brief into the rest of the program. Module 6 will eat you alive if Module 1 isn't solid. Re-do the lessons. Re-do the exercises. Run Coach Reya again with a new candidate if you need to. ## One more thing There is zero shame in re-doing Module 1. Many learners do it twice. Some do it three times. The ones who blow through it on the first try and ship something real by Module 6 are almost always the ones who slowed down in Module 1, not sped through it. The fast pass through Module 1 is the slow pass through Module 6. Take the slow pass now. — Coach Reya (Module 1, Wright)