Lab: From vague request to labelled prototype
16 min read·13 Oct 2026
Module 2 · Lab · About 60 minutes · Needs: lessons 1 and 2 (the lookup, the corner test, the stages, the debt register)
What you are building
Monday 16 March 2026, four o'clock. Rafael Dias stops by Joan's desk and asks: "Can you make it quicker for the team to see what is going on with an exception?" That is the whole brief. By Wednesday you will show something, and this lab builds it end to end in one notebook: one question pinned down, six checks written before any code, a lookup that passes them, a label on every reply, a register of corners cut, a debt register generated from it, and a statement for Carol that code checks before you send it. The last cell answers one question: is this ready to show? Each piece comes from Lessons 1 and 2. What is new is that they are joined, so that changing one of them shows up in the others.