Ship one automation and write up how it fails
Completion requirements
Build the thing. It can be genuinely small — a file that gets copied, a report that gets sent, a folder that gets tidied. Small and finished beats ambitious and abandoned.
Then write up roughly 300–600 words covering:
- The one-line sentence. When [trigger], make sure [outcome].
- What you deliberately left out of the smallest useful version, and why.
- The three guard rails. What happens if it runs twice, if it is interrupted halfway, and if the input is wrong? Say honestly which of the three you have not built yet.
- The heartbeat. Where does it beat, what watches it, and where does the alert land? Would that alert actually reach you on a Sunday?
- The manual fallback, in one paragraph, as you would hand it to somebody else.
If it is not finished, submit what you have and say what is blocking it. A clear description of where you are stuck is a perfectly good submission and it is the one I am most likely to reply to.