Phase 13 — Capstone: End-to-End ML Platforms
Difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Estimated Time: 2–4 weeks per capstone (pick one to ship; outline a second)
Why This Phase Exists
Phases 01–12 built components; the JD's job is systems. Each capstone composes 4–6 phase artifacts into one running platform with a single entry point, a results report, and the operational discipline (gates, lineage, monitoring) the track teaches. The capstone is the portfolio artifact: the thing you demo in interviews and the proof that the seams — where production ML actually fails — are yours.
Every capstone follows the same contract:
- A walking skeleton first: all stages connected with trivial implementations, one artifact flowing end to end, before any component is deepened.
- One entry point (
make demo/python run.py): clean-machine runnable, CPU-only, minutes not hours. - A money table: the headline results (metrics, latency, comparison vs baseline) at the top of the capstone README.
- An honest-limitations paragraph: what's simulated, what wouldn't survive contact with real scale, and what you'd build next.
The Four Capstones
| Capstone | Composes | The headline artifact |
|---|---|---|
| 01 — Recommender Platform | P03 features, P05–06 two-stage ranking, P09 serving, P11 A/B | candidate-gen → rank → serve → experiment readout, end to end |
| 02 — Streaming Feature Platform | P02 streams, P03 point-in-time, P08 orchestration, P12 drift | event stream → online/offline features → gated retraining loop |
| 03 — GenAI Assistant Platform | P04 retrieval, P10 guardrails, P11 experiments, P12 governance | hardened RAG with eval-harness CI and a canary release |
| 04 — Forecasting Platform | P07 backtesting, P08 pipelines, P09 batch serving, P12 monitoring | multi-series forecasting service with backtest-gated promotion |
Pick by target role: recsys/marketplace roles → 01; platform/infra roles → 02; GenAI roles → 03; supply-chain/fintech → 04. Ship one completely; outline a second in a design doc (the system-design/ walkthroughs show the altitude).
Guides in This Phase
- WARMUP.md — integration discipline: skeletons, seams, reports, and turning capstones into interview ammunition
Deliverables Checklist
- One capstone shipped to its full spec (entry point + money table + tests pass)
- Honest-limitations paragraph written
- A second capstone outlined as a 2-page design doc
- Resume bullets drafted from measured numbers (no invented metrics)