1.125 - Agentic Engineering
Prepare a proposal slide deck, submit it as a PDF, and use the same deck for your five-minute presentation. This problem set covers the proposal stage only. The PDF serves as your written proposal; no separate write-up is required.
| Item | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Due | Thursday, October 29, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time, during class |
| Class meeting | Zoom |
| Presentation | A five-minute presentation during class |
| Proposal PDF | Your presentation slides as your-github-username/proposal.pdf; this PDF also serves as your written proposal |
| Submission | Open a pull request to onexi/ps06 by the deadline |
Your submission should describe the problem, intended users, proposed solution, expected capabilities, and anticipated resources. The full requirements appear under Proposal Submission.
A working implementation, midpoint demonstration, and completed project are not required for this problem set. Those are later milestones, described below to help you plan.
The term project is an opportunity to apply the ideas, methods, and tools from the course to a problem that you find worthwhile.
The term project is an individual project. The instructors will consider requests to work in a team when students make a clear case for why the project warrants a team. A request should explain the proposed scope and how each member would make a substantive contribution. Team projects require instructor approval; the proposal assignment remains individual.
Discussing designs, approaches, algorithms, debugging strategies, and implementation choices with others is encouraged. These discussions do not change your responsibility for your own work. You may also use external code, libraries, data, images, text, models, AI tools, and other resources.
You are responsible for understanding the system you submit. Any external material must be clearly cited so that it is evident what you created, what you reused, and where reused material came from.
Choose a project that is ambitious enough to demonstrate meaningful work, but scoped so that it can be completed well within the available time.
The project does not need to use a particular technology, architecture, programming language, or interface. You may use any tools or libraries that are appropriate for the problem.
If you choose technologies that are unfamiliar to you, learning them is part of the project. The instructors can provide guidance, but you are responsible for acquiring the technical knowledge necessary to complete your work.
The quality of the final project should reflect sustained effort, sound judgment, and careful execution.
Submit your slide deck as a PDF and give a five-minute presentation using the same deck. Both are required. No separate write-up is required.
- Individual presentation: Present your proposal during the Zoom class on Thursday, October 29, 2026, beginning at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. You have five minutes to present.
- Proposal PDF: Submit your slide deck through a pull request to onexi/ps06 by 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, October 29, 2026. The PDF is your written proposal.
The proposal is the first of three term project deliverables. The midpoint check-in and final project will be submitted later.
Watch the walkthrough, Term Project - Proposal Pull Request: https://youtu.be/gYQ6bLJlnXQ.
Submit to the course repository: onexi/ps06.
Place your PDF in a folder named exactly after your GitHub username at the root of the repository. Name the file proposal.pdf. Your submission path should be:
your-github-username/proposal.pdf
Replace your-github-username with your actual GitHub username. For example, a student with the username alexmorgan would submit alexmorgan/proposal.pdf.
Your PDF submission is complete when you open the pull request containing this file to onexi/ps06 by the deadline. The pull request does not need to be merged by the deadline. You must also give your five-minute presentation during class.
Aim for five core slides for your five-minute presentation:
- Problem and audience: What problem or opportunity are you addressing, and for whom?
- Proposed solution: What will you build? Describe the major capabilities and what a user will be able to do.
- Approach: Identify the technologies, data sources, models, libraries, or external systems you expect to use.
- Scope and risks: What can you realistically complete, and what uncertainties could prevent success?
- Plan and success criteria: Outline your major milestones and explain how you will demonstrate that the project works.
- Make the five core slides understandable without your spoken presentation. Use concise explanations, readable labels, and diagrams where helpful.
- Keep the slides readable during a Zoom presentation. Avoid dense paragraphs and small text.
- You may include brief speaker notes or an appendix for supporting detail. Include any necessary notes in the submitted PDF, since ordinary slide exports may omit them.
- Keep your presentation focused on the five core slides and within five minutes. Supporting material does not extend the presentation time.
- Check the exported PDF before submitting it to ensure that all text, diagrams, and supporting material are visible and readable.
The proposal is not a contract. Projects often change as you learn more.
The purpose of this deliverable is to determine whether the idea is appropriate in scope and direction. The instructors will review the proposal and provide feedback, including approval or recommendations for revision.
Important
Before proceeding:
Do not invest heavily in an idea before receiving this feedback.
The following milestones are provided for planning. They are not part of the submission for this problem set.
By the midpoint, the exploratory phase should largely be over. You should have converged on a solid version of the project and made substantive progress toward implementing it.
Submit at the midpoint:
- A working project repository.
- A concise demonstration or presentation of your progress.
At this stage, we expect to see:
- A clearly defined final project direction.
- Evidence that the major technical uncertainties have been investigated.
- Meaningful implementation progress on the core of the project.
- Evidence that the principal technologies required for the project are viable and that you can use them effectively.
- A realistic plan for what remains before the final submission.
The project does not need to be complete, polished, or fully functional at the midpoint. It does need to be far enough along that completion is credible.
Warning
Project risk:
If you are still deciding what to build, learning foundational technologies, or have made little implementation progress, you are at significant risk of running out of time. At that point, you should reduce scope or otherwise revise the project accordingly.
The final deliverable is the completed and polished version of the work presented at the midpoint.
The emphasis between the midpoint and final submission should be on completion, refinement, testing, usability, documentation, and presentation rather than a major change in direction.
Submit:
- The completed project.
- A GitHub repository containing the source code and all files required to build and run the project.
- A README that explains:
- What the project does.
- How to install and run it.
- Important architectural or implementation choices.
- Any external libraries, code, data, models, or other resources used.
- A concise final demonstration or presentation highlighting the most important, distinctive, and technically interesting aspects of the project.
Do not attempt to demonstrate every feature. Focus on the parts that best communicate what you built, why it matters, and the quality of the work.
The criteria below apply to the completed term project. For this problem set, the instructors will review the proposal for appropriate scope and direction, as described above.
Completed projects will be evaluated as a whole. Important dimensions include:
The project should address a nontrivial problem and demonstrate an appropriate level of technical and conceptual sophistication. More complexity is not automatically better. Good scope and architectural judgment matter.
The system should demonstrate thoughtful design, appropriate abstractions, sensible technology choices, and sound implementation.
The core capabilities should work. The project should be tested sufficiently to support the claims you make about it.
Where the project has an end-user interface or workflow, it should be coherent and reasonably polished. For projects without a conventional user interface, this criterion will be considered in the context of the system being built.
Another technically capable person should be able to understand what you built and determine how to run or evaluate it.
The final presentation or demonstration should communicate the project clearly and efficiently, emphasizing its most important and distinctive aspects.
The final result should reflect sustained effort and care. You are responsible for managing your time and project scope so that your submitted work reaches an appropriate level of completeness and quality.
Exceptional projects may receive additional recognition.