Daily workflow

Module 9 closed the building part of this course: a three-lead migration team wired the readability engine into stash (the course’s running example, a small FastAPI feed reader) - the dependency that had sat declared-but-unused in pyproject.toml since your first day finally doing real work in the extraction, storage, and interface code. And the module’s own honest test came back with an admission attached. Coordination cost is real, it said; the team earned its keep on a migration that genuinely needed splitting, and most of what you’ll actually do to stash doesn’t clear that bar at all.

That was the last piece of harness. What nobody has done yet is add any of it up - what the whole .pi/ directory cost, in tokens, turns, and maintenance, and whether it paid for itself. This module adds nothing new to the harness. It’s a capstone: audit what you built, then judge it against what it cost.

Four things should be true by the end, and the closing lesson holds the build to them honestly. Every file in stash’s .pi/ should trace back to the module that taught you to write it - no orphan files, nothing you can’t explain. Every layer’s cost should be stated in something countable - tokens, turns, or dollars - not just the benefit it bought. The tree alone should tell a teammate which parts are finished and which still need work. And for each layer, you should be able to say plainly whether it earned its keep - not just that you built it. Where the honest answer is “not finished” or “not worth it,” this module says so instead of rounding up.

• Assemble the harness - the build log: walk stash’s .pi/ end to end, and count how much of it is finished versus still a plan.
• Keep it running - the harness drifts on its own; the routine that keeps it worth trusting, and what it costs to skip.
• When to reach for Pi - the honest verdict: where the minimal core wins, where it quietly becomes your job, and whether it’s your primary tool or your second one.
• Close the course - the whole harness accounted for honestly, layer by layer, then back to the question this course opened with.

Start by walking the assembled harness.