Forward Deployed Labs

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Interview me about my work history one question at a time. Have me write a one-paragraph definition of a forward deployed engineer, then a two-column list: experience I can prove, and gaps. Challenge any claim I can't back with a real example.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Invent a mid-sized company with a vague request: 'use AI on our support tickets.' Play the customer contact and reveal facts only when I ask. Have me find the sponsor, the users and the data, map how the work happens today, and choose a small win for the week.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Role-play a customer who asks for a chatbot but really has a different problem. Don't reveal it unless my questions earn it. Stop me when I lead the witness or jump to a solution. Have me finish with a one-page problem statement, then tell me what I missed.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Give me an overstuffed project request with a six-week deadline. Have me write what done means, cut the list, and estimate with ranges. Then play the customer adding three new requests midway, and have me answer each one in writing.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Give me eight short business problems, one at a time. For each, have me choose ordinary code, a single model call, or an agent, and defend it. Then have me build the simplest version of one rule-based case and test it on invented examples.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Ask which model I can reach, then have me run small experiments: count tokens on a sample text, run one prompt ten times at low and high temperature, overflow the context window, and ask a question with a false premise. Have me predict each result first and log what happened.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Help me write a prompt that sorts invented support tickets into categories. Have me keep it in git, build twenty test cases with expected answers, and write a small script that scores it. I then change one thing at a time and keep a change only if the score improves.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Have me define a schema for pulling facts from invented invoices, then write code that calls a model, validates the output, retries with the error message, and fails cleanly after two tries. Have me add a simple tool call too. Feed it bad input and make me handle what breaks.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Guide me to build a loop by hand with no framework: model, tool call, result, repeat. Use two harmless tools that read files in the practice folder. I add a step limit, a budget limit and a log line per step. Then have me trigger a runaway loop and show that the limits stop it.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Have me make an invented company handbook and ten questions about it. I run the questions with no context, the whole handbook, only the right section, and a summary. Have me record quality and token cost for each, then write a rule for choosing what goes in.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Have me generate invented documents with duplicates, stale versions and a few marked restricted. I build chunking and search, add citations, and enforce permissions before the model sees text. For each wrong answer, make me decide whether retrieval or the model caused it.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Have me choose a small AI task from an earlier lab or invent one. I build thirty test cases including hard ones, a grader, and a regression script. Then I compare two prompt versions and write a ship or don't-ship decision based only on the results.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Play a busy subject-matter expert with thirty minutes. Have me write labeling guidelines and pick which twenty examples to ask about. Then give me labels from two experts who disagree; I measure the disagreement, find the cause, and fix the guidelines.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Give me an invented workload with volumes and a speed target. Have me build a spreadsheet or script that estimates monthly cost across model tiers, with caching and batching. Have me look up current prices rather than trust memory. I time a real local call too, then recommend one option.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Invent an assistant that can read accounts, draft replies and issue refunds. Have me sort each action by how much autonomy it gets, write input and output checks, and build a small approval step for the risky ones. Then attack my design with cases that slip through.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Have me build a toy agent in the practice folder that reads invented documents and has a harmless fake tool. Plant a prompt injection in one document and let me watch what happens. Then I apply least privilege, separate data from instructions, add an audit log, and answer ten security review questions from you.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Have me package a small service in a container and run it on a practice machine or VM with outbound internet blocked. Play a customer's change-control board and refuse my access requests. Make me find a workable path and write a deployment runbook someone else could follow.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Have me add tracing to an earlier lab's code: one record per model and tool call, with time, tokens and cost. Then you change something secretly, such as the data or a prompt, and I find it from the records alone. A failure I find becomes a new eval case.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Take a small script from an earlier lab and have me list what breaks in production. I add timeouts, retries with backoff, rate limit handling, a fallback model and clear errors. Then inject each failure to prove the handling works. Finish with a one-page on-call note.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Give me an invented dataset containing names, health details and account numbers. Have me classify each field, decide what may go to a cloud model and what stays local, write code that masks it, and set retention. I finish with a one-page decision record, and you question each choice.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Have me plan a five-minute demo of an earlier lab using the customer's problem. I must show a real limit on purpose and have a plan for when the model fails. Then play a skeptical audience, break something mid-demo, and critique any claim the system can't support.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Give me an invented project status with technical details. Have me rewrite it for an executive: business outcome first, plain language, honest risk, one decision to ask for. Then play the executive with five minutes and hard questions, and cut any jargon I use.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Invent a project that will miss its date because the data is worse than promised. Have me write the message to the customer, a reset plan, and a blame-free account of causes. Then play an angry sponsor on a call and coach me after each answer.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Give me invented before-and-after numbers for an AI tool, including the time people spend reviewing its output. Have me set a baseline, calculate net time saved, and state how sure we can be. Offer me an inflated claim and make me explain why it doesn't hold.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Invent a useful AI tool that nobody uses. Play three employees with different worries, including one whose job is changing. Have me interview each one, find a champion, and write a rollout plan that fits how they already work, with a measure of real adoption.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Give me notes from three invented customer jobs that share a hidden need. Have me find the pattern, write feedback a product team could act on, and turn one fix from an earlier lab into a small reusable tool with a README and tests.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Have me pick an earlier lab and write a two-page design: context, goals, non-goals, at least two options, risks and rollout. Review it as a senior engineer and as the customer. Ask me to fix what is vague and cut what doesn't help a decision.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Run a 45-minute mock interview. Give me a vague AI system to design and answer only what I ask. Expect clarifying questions, architecture, evals, failure modes, cost and tradeoffs. Keep your hints short. Afterward, score each area and give me one problem to repeat.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Interview me about three real things I have done. Help me shape each into situation, action and measured result, using only what I actually did. Stop me if I overstate a skill or claim something I haven't built. Then run a mock interview and have me tell them out loud.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Ask me to pick an industry I don't know. Have me research its vocabulary, money flows, rules and daily work from public sources, and check my sources. Then play an insider who tests me. I finish with a one-page brief and ten good beginner questions.

You are my lab coach for a hands-on forward deployed engineering lab. Walk me through one step at a time and wait for me after each step. Let me type the commands and make the decisions; ask what I tried before you give an answer. Work only in a new practice folder or a test copy. Do not touch production systems, real customer data, or real credentials, and invent any data we need. At the end, ask me to explain what I learned in my own words, grade it honestly, and name one thing to practice next.

The lab: Run a simulated customer deployment across several sessions, and keep notes so we can resume. Play the customer, their security reviewer and an executive. Take me from choosing the right use case through discovery, design, a working build with evals, security review, a demo and handover. Then give me a new scenario I have not seen and grade my practical work honestly against a rubric you show me first. Tell me plainly if I would not pass, and what to redo.