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Beginner's First FCC Project

Six gentle prompts for people who just installed the FCC package and want to feel productive within an hour. All prompts use the deterministic (mock) simulation engine so no API keys are needed. The goal is to demystify the Find -> Create -> Critique cycle and the R.I.S.C.E.A.R. ten-slot persona specification.

Personas Used

Persona ID Full Name Category Role in Prompts
BC Blueprint Crafter core Shapes the initial design
RC Research Crafter core Gathers and frames information
UG User Guide Crafter docs_as_code Writes the walk-through prose

Prompt 1: Hello FCC

Audience: Beginner Difficulty: beginner Personas: BC, UG

Context

First command-line encounter with FCC after pip install -e ..

Prompt

BC and UG, please onboard me in five minutes.

Find: list the three commands I should run right after installation
to confirm the package is importable, personas load, and a scenario
can be found. Identify the single most common first-run failure and
its fix.

Create: write a 150-word "hello FCC" paragraph I can paste into my
project's README to show colleagues what this framework does.

Critique: flag any claim in that paragraph that would embarrass a
maintainer if it turned out not to be quite true.

Expected Output

  • Three-command smoke test
  • Hello-FCC paragraph
  • Fact-check notes

Tips

  • Stay honest. If you are not sure FCC does something, say "will explore in Day 2."

Prompt 2: Running Your First Simulation

Audience: Beginner Difficulty: beginner Personas: BC, RC

Prompt

Walk me through running the simplest built-in scenario via
`fcc simulate --scenario docs/tutorials/beginner/hello.json`. Describe
what each phase prints, where the output trace lands on disk, and
how to re-run with a different random seed.

After the run, name the two files I should open first to understand
what happened, and explain (in plain English) the difference between
an "event" and a "trace."

Expected Output

  • Annotated CLI transcript
  • File reading order
  • Event vs trace definition

Prompt 3: Understanding Traces

Audience: Beginner Difficulty: beginner Personas: RC, UG

Prompt

Open the trace JSON produced by the previous run. Walk line-by-line
through the first 15 entries and translate each into conversational
English. When you reach a timestamp, explain how the deterministic
engine assigns them. Finish with three things a newcomer usually
misunderstands about traces.

Expected Output

  • Annotated trace excerpt
  • Common-misunderstanding list

Prompt 4: Reading the Event Bus

Audience: Beginner Difficulty: beginner Personas: RC

Prompt

Subscribe to the in-process EventBus and print every event emitted
during a five-turn simulation. Group the output by event type and
count occurrences. Explain what each event type means in one line
and highlight the two types most useful for debugging.

Expected Output

  • Grouped event table
  • One-liner per type

Variations

  • Filter to a single persona
  • Pipe to a JSON Lines file for later replay

Prompt 5: Your First Custom Persona YAML

Audience: Beginner Difficulty: beginner Personas: BC, UG

Prompt

Author a minimal custom persona named "Weekend Project Pal" whose
role is to help a hobbyist pick a small project and finish it. Fill
in all ten R.I.S.C.E.A.R. slots (Role, Input, Style, Constraints,
Expected Output, Archetype, Responsibilities, Role Skills, Role
Collaborators, Role Adoption Checklist). Keep each slot between one
and four sentences.

Then run `fcc validate` against the file and report any errors.

Expected Output

  • Full YAML file
  • Validation report

Prompt 6: Day-Two Challenge

Audience: Beginner Difficulty: beginner Personas: BC, RC, UG

Prompt

Given what I learned in prompts 1-5, propose a 2-hour "Day Two"
challenge that layers on one new concept (choose from: a second
persona, a new scenario, or a simple quality gate). List the
success criteria, the one file I will edit, and the command I will
run at the end to confirm victory.

Expected Output

  • Day Two plan
  • Success criteria
  • Edit-and-verify workflow

See Also

  • Guidebook Chapter 2 (First Steps)
  • Notebook 01 (Beginner walkthrough)
  • docs/tutorials/sample-prompts/persona-interaction-prompts.md