Daily Build Session¶

The season plan (09_timeline.md) says what week we are in. This doc says what a night looks like. Every build night follows the same ritual: pre-session prep, stand-up, work block, pre-close checkpoint, close-out. Same shape Week 1 and Week 6. Only the content changes.

Rule of thumb: if it is not on the board or in the build blog, it did not happen. Students who miss a night catch up in five minutes by reading the last blog post and scanning their subteam's column.

Session Timeline¶

Assume a 3-hour weeknight session (6:00–9:00pm). Scale proportionally for longer weekend sessions.

Time	Block	Who	Duration
−10 min	Pre-session prep	Team Lead + Subteam Leads	10 min
0:00	Stand-up	Whole team	10 min
0:10	Work block	Subteams, in parallel	~2h 20m
2:30	Pre-close checkpoint	Subteam Leads	15 min
2:45	End-of-session close	Whole team	15 min

Pre-Session Prep (before doors open, ~10 min)¶

Team Lead and Subteam Leads only.

Open the board. Confirm every subteam has WIP planned for the session.
Assign owners to any unowned Ready cards that need to move tonight.
Post the plan in the team chat, one line per subteam:

Tonight — Subteam 1: finish bumper mount. Subteam 2: intake endurance ×20. Subteam 3: vision calibration + PR review. Subteam 4: PDH re-lug. Subteam 5 (Business): sponsor thank-yous + Impact essay §2 draft.
Confirm attendance. Reassign any card whose owner is not coming.

Stand-Up (10 min, whole team)¶

Timed. Ten minutes hard cap. Stand up — literally — so it stays short.

Each Subteam Lead reports, in order (all five subteams, Business/Outreach included): 1. Done since last session — one sentence. 2. Goal tonight — one sentence, tied to a specific card. 3. Blockers — parts, decisions, other subteams.

Business Subteam Lead reports same three items — sponsor asks out, essay progress, upcoming outreach event. If Business is skipped from stand-up, it drifts.

Then: - Safety Captain calls out shop hazards active tonight (welding, lathe, pneumatics test, tall-ladder work). - Lead Mentor gets one reminder — schedule, gate deadline, one thing only.

No design debate in stand-up. Move it to the work block with the two people who need to be in it.

Work Block (~2h 20m)¶

Rules that hold every night:

One In-Progress card per student. Pull the next card from Ready only when yours moves to In Review or Done.
Blocked >15 minutes → move card to Blocked. Write the reason. Ping in chat if someone else can unblock. Pick the next Ready card. Do not sit on a blocker in silence.
Attach photos to cards. Part off the mill, subsystem installed, auto path recorded — one photo, one line. This is what feeds the build blog.
Design changes after CAD lock go through ECR (templates/ecr.md). Do not "just tweak it" in CAM.
Test failures get a failure-log entry (templates/failure_log.md) the same night. Not tomorrow.

Mentors during the work block: teach, ask "why", enforce safety. Not build the robot.

Pre-Close Checkpoint (~30 min before end, ~15 min)¶

Subteam Leads sweep their own column.

Every card that was touched tonight gets its status updated. In Progress cards with no update are treated as not-worked and reset.
Purchasing Lead scans everything tagged needs-order or blocked:part and places orders before shop close.
Team Lead scans the Blocked column for anything that has been blocked more than two sessions. Escalate or kill.
Anyone with a subsystem approaching a gate confirms the gate artifact status (see 07_gate_reviews.md).

End-of-Session Close (15 min, whole team)¶

Timed. Same shape every night.

Subteam Lead round-robin (5 min total) — each reports:
What moved on the board.
What is blocked, and what would unblock it.
What tomorrow's session needs from other subteams.
Build blog post (5 min) — one paragraph + one photo per subteam. Written by a rotating student (not a mentor). Posted before anyone leaves. See templates/build_blog_post.md.
Social cross-post — Social Media Lead (or delegate) pulls one photo + one line from the blog and posts to team social same night. See templates/social_post.md.
Shop reset (5 min) — tools away, chips vacuumed, robot on cart, batteries on charger, doors locked. Non-negotiable.

If the session ran over, cut the work block, not the close. A messy shop and a stale board cost more tomorrow than the twenty extra minutes of build time saved tonight.

Between Sessions — Async Handoff¶

Everyone misses nights. The system must survive that. Three artifacts carry state:

The board — single source of truth. Ownership, status, blockers. See 12_tools_and_tracking.md.
The build blog — nightly post, timestamped, one screen tall. Photos. Blocker call-outs. Missed a night? Read the last post.
Subsystem chat channels — real-time, but ephemeral. Anything decided in chat gets echoed to a card comment or the blog. Otherwise the decision does not exist.

Absent student's job when they return: read last blog post → scan their subteam's column → pick up next Ready card. Not "ask around what happened".

Weekly Rhythm¶

The daily loop nests inside a weekly loop.

Monday — set weekly goals against 09_timeline.md. Tag cards with the current gate.
Tue–Thu — normal build nights.
Friday or Saturday (longer session) — integration and endurance testing. Full-team demo of what moved this week.
Sunday — mentors + Subteam Leads only: order review, board grooming, next-week plan draft. Rest of the team off. Burnout is a real failure mode; see 08_team_structure.md.

Common Failure Modes¶

Stand-up becomes a design meeting. Cut it hard. Take the discussion offline with the two people who care.
Cards never leave In Progress. Nobody defined acceptance criteria. Add them; see templates/card_template.md.
Blockers pile up unowned. Team Lead is not sweeping. Do the sweep every session.
Blog stops getting written after Week 3. The team will drift and absent students will fall behind. Rotate the writer daily; no exceptions.
"We'll clean up tomorrow." Never. Reset the shop every night.
Mentors do the work when a student is stuck. Students disengage. Mentor asks a question, student does the work.