Capstone & Synthesis

Everything converges here. How to ship (the capstone — a vertical slice of Novgorod for a grant), what to take away (a synthesis of the through-lines between game dev and ML), how to learn from what you shipped (the postmortem). The course didn't give you facts about games, it gave you cross-disciplinary judgment and a spine for "when ML is NOT the answer". Now go and ship something.

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finale

Delivery, patterns, reflection

Three lessons that close the course: how to get a project to release, what carries over from everything you've read, and how to turn experience into skill.

How to run a capstone~16 min

A vertical slice, risk-first ordering, the scope knife, 5 tracks, Claude as a companion. Tied to Novgorod 1207.✦ open

Pattern synthesis~15 min

A dozen through-lines between game dev and ML, the spine of "when ML isn't the answer", the meta-skill of good questions. The confluence of the course.✦ open

Postmortem~14 min

Three buckets (worked / didn't / got lucky), blameless, luck vs skill, reflection as a multiplier. The end of the course.✦ open

End of the course. 12 modules, 54 lessons, interactive labs. The full source is 12-capstone-projects.md plus the whole course. The through-line: classical AI is for control, modern AI is for content, and maturity is knowing when a tool is NOT the answer. Now go and ship something — the games (and systems) you ship are your teachers.