Boss Fight Rubrics

Checkpoint Rubrics

Use these rubrics to grade readiness before unlocking the next wave.

Boss Fight 1: Foundations Trial

Goal: prove C/C++ fundamentals and data structure competence.

• Implementation correctness (40%)

• Memory safety and ownership (25%)

• Performance reasoning (20%)

• Communication clarity (15%)

Passing: 80%+ overall, no memory leaks or undefined behavior, clear tradeoff explanation.

Goal: prove OS, networking, and debugging competency.

• Concurrency correctness (30%)

• Networking reliability (25%)

• Postmortem quality (25%)

• Observability and logs (20%)

Passing: 80%+ overall, at least one recovery path documented, postmortem includes root cause + fix.

Goal: prove production readiness and design judgement.

• Architecture tradeoffs (35%)

• Testing strategy (25%)

• Risk mitigation (20%)

• Delivery plan (20%)

Passing: 80%+ overall, clear scaling plan + failure strategy, release checklist complete.