Week 5 Guided session: Project 2 Target and Baseline Planning

Define a target voice in observable dimensions, freeze the unchanged baseline, and cost one viable post-training route

22 March 2027 · Guided session

Estimated active time: 45 minutes · Release: Monday 22 March 2027 at 09:00 AET · Solution release: immediate completion checklist; no model solution.

Learning goals#

• define a target voice in observable dimensions;
• verify the provenance and role of target-style data;
• freeze the unchanged starting-checkpoint baseline; and
• cost one viable post-training route before training.

Preparation#

Read the Project 2 brief and Week 5 lecture. Choose a permitted personal Project 1 checkpoint or the course narrative fallback and record its frozen revision.

Activity#

1. Translate the target voice into three to five behavioural indicators and one unacceptable failure.
2. Inspect the supplied public-domain editions, licences, story boundaries, and source-level split.
3. Generate unchanged-checkpoint outputs on the allowed baseline prompts and record decoding settings.
4. Compare continued pre-training, SFT, and preference-based routes against available data and compute.
5. Write a one-page plan containing the selected route, minimum baseline, retention measure, pilot, and stop rule.

Expected output and self-check#

Retain the target contract, source record, unchanged baseline, and costed plan. The plan is ready only if another reader could decide whether the claimed style changed and whether narrative ability regressed.