Exercise Design

---
name: exercise-design
description: Design training exercises that make learners perform the target skill with realistic inputs, constraints, feedback, difficulty, and failure modes rather than merely restating lesson content.
---
# Exercise Design

Use when learners need practice that transfers a taught procedure into independent performance.

## Procedure
1. Select the learning objective and identify the observable behavior the exercise must elicit.
2. Build a scenario that resembles real work closely enough to require the same judgment while avoiding unnecessary production risk or sensitive data.
3. Provide only the context, tools, references, and starting artifacts a competent practitioner would reasonably have.
4. Include important edge cases or competing signals when the real skill depends on prioritization, diagnosis, or tradeoffs.
5. Define success criteria and evidence before writing hints or a solution.
6. Add scaffolding only where needed for the learner level, then design later attempts with less support.
7. Create feedback that explains why an approach worked or failed and points back to the underlying principle rather than just revealing the answer.
8. Pilot the exercise and adjust ambiguity, difficulty, time, and tooling when capable learners fail for reasons unrelated to the target skill.

## Decision rules
- An exercise is practice, not another lecture disguised as questions.
- Difficulty should come from the target capability, not missing instructions or broken setup.
- Multiple valid solutions are fine when the quality criteria can distinguish them.
- Avoid production-impacting exercises unless the environment and authorization are explicitly designed for it.

## Quality gate
The exercise is ready when success requires the intended skill, the setup is reliable, learners receive meaningful feedback, difficulty matches the target level, and completion evidence can be evaluated without guessing what the learner actually did.