P42 · Automating a Manual Task
capstone: take a task done on paper/whiteboard (tally words, build a vocabulary table, find-and-replace across lines) and let a notebook do it — the payoff that motivates the discipline
The capstone payoff: take tasks you do on paper — tally words, build a vocabulary table, fix a term everywhere — and hand them to a notebook, ending with a task of your own.
Everything in this discipline has been pointing here. You can run a cell, you know the shapes your material takes, you can name work and repeat it — this pillar spends all of that on tasks you genuinely do at your desk: counting the words in a text, building a clean vocabulary list, changing a term everywhere it appears. Each is work you have done on paper; each becomes a notebook that finishes in a second and never miscounts.
The last module hands you the pen. You bring a small repetitive task from your own working life and turn it into a notebook of your own, with hints and a gentle grader walking alongside — there is no single right answer. Finishing it is the moment this stops being a course and becomes a skill you own.