Certification Checkpoint
To certify on the DevOps / SRE track you must demonstrate, in a 30-minute live exercise:
1. Load the right skill from a natural-language request — name the skill, paste the load command. 2. Drive a multi-step workflow across GitHub Actions and Vercel — show the artifacts at each step. 3. Hand off cleanly to another track — produce the handoff doc with no missing fields. 4. Respond to a curveball — Eric or your reviewer changes a constraint mid-exercise; you adjust without re-loading skills unnecessarily.
Pass criteria: every claim has a link, no "keep an eye on it" entries, the right skill was loaded for each phase.
How Eric talks about this
“certify means demonstrate, not explain”
The cert checkpoint is a live exercise. You drive the workflow, the reviewer watches. Explaining what you would do is not the same as doing it.
“every claim has a link”
Cert pass criterion. During the 30-minute exercise, every status statement must be backed by a URL, a record, or a file path. Reviewers count missing links.
“infrastructure as code or it didn't happen”
The signature rule for this track. If you can't apply 'infrastructure as code or it didn't happen' under time pressure in the cert exercise, the muscle isn't built yet.
Try these exact phrasings
Try it yourself
Run the 30-minute certification exercise with a reviewer (Eric, your TL, or a certified peer). Submit: the recording, the artifacts produced, the reviewer's pass/fail with notes. Infrastructure as code or it didn't happen applies — every artifact must be linked.
- reviewer pass mark
- every artifact has a link
- no 'keep an eye on it' entries
Quick check
1. How long is the certification exercise?
- a. 10 minutes
- b. 30 minutes
- c. 2 hours
- d. A full day
Reveal answer
30 minutes live with a reviewer. Tight scope, real work, real artifacts.
2. What disqualifies a cert run?
- a. Going under time
- b. A 'keep an eye on it' entry
- c. Loading a skill
- d. Asking the reviewer a question
Reveal answer
Generic next steps disqualify. Every claim needs a link, every item needs an owner and a date.
3. Who can sign off a certification?
- a. Anyone
- b. Eric, your TL, or a certified peer on the same track
- c. Only Eric
- d. Self-certification
Reveal answer
Cert sign-off requires a reviewer who is themselves certified on the track (or Eric / your TL).
Built 2026-07-31 · 3 teaching moments · 3 prompts