Milestone 1: Your curiosity, committed
This milestone chapter is part of a book in active development and has not yet been through the author’s review. Content may change as the review advances.
This chapter closes Studio 1: Begin with your curiosity. Its lessons each ended at It is your turn; what you wrote there arrives here as working material, and this is where the pieces become one artifact you can defend.
What this milestone produces. Your committed curiosity with its starting belief and the evidence that would revise it, the brainstormed candidates with what you kept and rejected and why, and one chosen research problem, scored and red-teamed, with your expected answer on record.
What you bring
Check you are carrying each of these before you start. If one is missing, go back and work that lesson’s It is your turn first; the practice below assumes it.
- Lesson 1 — From Curiosity to a Research Problem: your committed curiosity, the brainstormed candidates with NEW elements marked and kept or rejected with reasons, your chosen research problem scored and red-teamed, and your expected answer.
The practice
- Copy your opening move’s four lines as the artifact’s version zero, dated.
- Widen the curiosity: write two candidate directions yourself, then run the structured brainstorm and mark everything it introduced as NEW.
- Choose the research problem and score it honestly on importance, feasibility, and contribution, one sentence each.
- Write your expected answer and name one real person or role for whom a different answer would be genuinely surprising.
- Keep the trail: candidates kept and rejected, each with its reason, and the NEW elements you adopted as your own.
A version, not a pass
Your milestone artifact is a dated, numbered version with the reason for the version attached. When later evidence changes it, you write the next version rather than editing the last one, because the sequence of changes is itself part of your research record.
The four rails, here
Four concerns cross every studio in this book. At this milestone they take these specific forms.
- Ethics, permissions, and data exposure. Note now whether chasing this curiosity would require people, and flag it before anything is designed.
- Evidence, provenance, and reproducibility. Your starting belief is a claim to check, not to defend; write it so evidence can move it.
- AI activity, verification, and human decisions. Brainstorm freely, and mark every AI stretch NEW; start a simple exchange log now, and Studio 2 turns it into your AI Research Ledger.
- Uncertainty, claim boundary, and revision history. Write what would change your mind while nothing is yet at stake; that sentence is the seed of every later boundary.
Where this milestone sits
This is the first of the book’s twelve milestones. Milestone 2 sets the rules that protect this curiosity, opens the ledger that records every delegation, verifies your first AI assistance, and closes the arc by declaring your formal research question. The chain ends at Milestone 12: Your release and next cycle, where you decide whether your finished research artifact leaves your hands.
What sends you back
Studio 3’s evidence map and Studio 4’s diagnosis both send curiosity back here. A revised curiosity is progress on the record, not a restart.
How this milestone is assessed
Each row scores 0, 1, or 2. 10 points total.
| # | Criterion | 0 | 1 | 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The milestone artifact exists in full, specific to your own project | absent, or generic text that would fit any project | present but incomplete, or specific in some parts and generic in others | complete and unmistakably about your project |
| 2 | The milestone is written as a dated, numbered version with its reason | no version, or a version with no reason given | versioned, but the reason is decorative rather than an account of what changed | versioned with a reason a reader could use to reconstruct your thinking |
| 3 | Every judgment in the artifact is defended by you, not asserted by a tool | conclusions appear with no reasoning, or reproduce a tool’s wording | reasoning present but thin where the decision was hardest | each judgment carries a reason you could defend under questioning |
| 4 | The four rails are carried in the form this studio requires | one or more rails absent where this studio required them | all rails present but one is nominal | every rail addressed in the form this studio requires |
| 5 | The milestone’s own product is present and defensible: Your committed curiosity with its starting belief and revising evidence, the brainstormed candidates with NEW elements marked and kept or rejected with reasons, and one chosen research problem, scored and red-teamed, with your expected answer on record | the milestone’s own product is missing | present but would not survive a careful question | present and defensible as stated |
Your workbook
Open the workbook with the badge above. It walks these steps with a cell for each one, ends by writing your milestone version with its reason, and adds the rows this studio contributes to your exchange log and your Research Dossier.