Worked sample · printable PDF
TRD-04 · QC that catches model mistakes
Which verification steps does a credentialed technician never skip when the suggestion came from a model?
Specialty centers · AI-Assisted Trades & Credentials
Twelve printable shop-floor briefs you can assign this term
Free briefs that treat the model as a tool on the bench, not a subject in a book. Students measure how often an AI assistant sends a technician down a wrong path, then build the QC checklist that catches it — and prove the checklist works against suggestions they already know are wrong. Every brief has its own PDF, and all twelve are in the bank PDF. No account. No customer data leaves your shop.
The shop rule
Model output is a suggestion to be verified, and the verification is the assignment. No brief authorizes acting on it on live customer property, a vehicle returning to service, energized equipment, or food for consumption. Customer, vehicle, and patient data never enters a public model. The capstone stacks onto a Board-approved credential — it is not evidence of one.
How to run one
- Students choose the brief. You name the trade and task family in writing first.
- Two scheduled checkpoints. Score with the six questions below.
- Mentor is advisory — school-supervised, never one-to-one unsupervised.
Featured packets
Featured · printable PDF
TRD-01 · Diagnostic assistant limits
How often does it send a technician down a wrong path — a test, a teardown, or a part that costs hours and money before the error surfaces?
Catalog (10 briefs on the page)
- TRD-02 · Service documentation
Can it write one that survives a warranty audit, a service manager's review, and a lawyer's reading?
- TRD-03 · Estimating under uncertainty
Where does the model run over, where under, and which of those errors is the one that costs you a customer?
- TRD-05 · Code awareness
How often is it right, how often is it fluently wrong, and what lookup workflow replaces trusting it?
- TRD-06 · The non-automotive variant
Pick a trade outside the shop bay — culinary, cosmetology, health support, early childhood, horticulture — and define where AI assist is safe, where it is merely useless, and where it is prohibited. Then prove the boundary with a test rather than an opinion.
- TRD-07 · Parts and supply chain
Photograph a part, or hand over a spec sheet, and ask a model to identify it. Measure the mis-identification rate — then price what a wrong part actually costs in return shipping, delay, comeback, and a customer waiting on a vehicle or a building.
- TRD-08 · Customer explanation
Does it stay accurate while becoming clear — or does it become clear by quietly promising something the shop cannot deliver?
- TRD-09 · Credential crosswalk
Where does the capstone genuinely document practice toward a competency, where does it merely touch one — and where does it prove nothing at all?
- TRD-10 · Shop data privacy
Customer names, addresses, plate and VIN numbers, building layouts, security details, household schedules, patient information. Write the rule for what never enters a public model — and make it something a busy technician will actually follow at 4:45 on a Friday.
- TRD-11 · Apprenticeship narrative
Turn your capstone into the artifact an employer, a hiring foreman, or a joint apprenticeship committee would actually respect — and find out by putting it in front of one.
- TRD-12 · Put the tool down
What was the signal that told you to stop, and how would a first-year apprentice recognize it?
Six-dimension rubric
- R1 — Is one trade, one task family, and one point in the workflow named — where does the suggestion enter the job?
- R2 — Are the trials logged so another student could re-run them with the same tool and scoring?
- R3 — Is there an honest comparator — the shop's existing procedure, the manual, or a journeyman's method?
- R4 — Are wrong suggestions counted and costed in shop terms: comeback, rework hours, warranty, safety?
- R5 — Could a working technician pick up the artifact and use it Monday without a phone call?
- R6 — Who is harmed when the model is wrong and a tech does not catch it — and what did the student refuse to let it decide?
Feedback
Scope unclear? Shop language off? Tell us here — you do not have to leave an email.