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Month 7-Week 4: Track milestone + first specialty post

Week summary

  • Goal: Hit a defined milestone in your track. Publish your first substantive specialty post.
  • Time: ~9 h over 3 sessions.
  • Output: Track milestone (v0.2 release); seventh public blog post (first specialty piece); month-7 retrospective.

Why this week matters

Specialty posts are how you establish your professional identity in 2026. The first one matters most-it commits you publicly to a niche. Done well, it gets reactions from the people you want to work with.

Prerequisites

  • M07-W01–W03 complete.
  • Comparison done (with verdict).
  • Session A-Tue/Wed evening (~3 h): milestone push
  • Session B-Sat morning (~4 h): blog post draft
  • Session C-Sun afternoon (~2 h): publish + month retro

Session A-Milestone push

Goal: Hit the v0.2 milestone defined in DESIGN.md.

Part 1-Triage and pick (15 min)

What are the 3 features needed to call it v0.2? Pick. Cut everything else from this week's scope.

Part 2-Build (150 min)

Heads-down. Tests where applicable.

Part 3-Polish for tag (15 min)

Update README, CHANGELOG. Tag v0.2.0.

Output of Session A

  • v0.2.0 tagged.

Session B-Specialty blog post

Goal: Draft and edit the first substantive specialty post (~2500 words).

Part 1-Outline (30 min)

Track A title: "What I learned building an eval framework for agentic LLM systems." Track B title: "Submitting to SWE-bench Lite: my first agent and what surprised me." Track C title: "What it actually costs to self-host a 7B model in 2026."

Outline (~2500 words): 1. Hook (200 w)-the specific problem, the specific result. 2. Why I'm building this (300 w)-niche identified in week 3. 3. The approach (500 w)-design choices and rationale. Code snippets. 4. Comparison vs incumbent (400 w)-table from week 3. 5. What's working (400 w)-features that landed. 6. What's not yet (300 w)-honest gaps. (This is where credibility comes from.) 7. What I'm learning (200 w)-meta-what specialty depth feels like. 8. What's next (200 w)-Q3 remaining + Q4.

Part 2-Draft (150 min)

Write. Use real numbers. Embed code snippets and charts.

Part 3-Edit (60 min)

Read aloud. Cut filler. Tighten the hook.

Output of Session B

  • Drafted and edited specialty post.

Session C-Publish + month retro

Goal: Publish broadly. Run month retro.

Part 1-Publish (45 min)

  • Personal blog.
  • Cross-post: HN (Show HN if applicable), r/MachineLearning (Project flair), r/LocalLLaMA (especially Track C), X, LinkedIn.
  • Tag track-relevant maintainers (Inspect AI team, vLLM team, etc.) politely.
  • Email to 5 specific practitioners in your specialty.

Part 2-Engage (30 min)

Respond to comments. The first specialty post often surfaces unexpected questions-those are content for future posts.

Part 3-Month-7 retro (45 min)

MONTH_7_RETRO.md: 

# Month 7 retro

## Artifacts shipped
- Track repo at v0.2.0
- DESIGN.md complete with comparison
- 3 paper notes
- 1 progress post + 1 specialty post

## KPIs vs Q3 targets
| Metric | Target Q3 | Actual end of M07 |
|---|---|---|
| Public repos | 1 | 1 (specialty) |
| Blog posts | 2 | 2 ✓ |
| Papers read deeply | 12 | 4 (need to accelerate)
| OSS PRs | 1+ | 0 (M09 target)

## Lessons
1. ...
2. ...
3. ...

## Pace
- Sustainable / accelerated / behind?
- Head-to-head comparison was the most informative single experiment.

## M08 plan
- Universal: vLLM serving, AWQ quantization, LoRA + DPO fundamentals.
- Track work continues in parallel.

Output of Session C

  • Seventh public blog post live, ≥3 channels.
  • Month-7 retrospective committed.

End-of-week artifact

  • Track milestone v0.2.0 tagged
  • Seventh public blog post published
  • Month-7 retrospective written

End-of-week self-assessment

  • My track has a measurable, public artifact.
  • My specialty post is something I'd link in interviews.
  • I'm on pace for Q3 KPIs.

Common failure modes for this week

  • Milestone too vague. "Some progress" is not a milestone.
  • Specialty post too generic. Specifics from your project make it unique.
  • No outreach. The post compounds when others see it.

What's next (preview of M08-W01)

Universal infra block begins: vLLM + KV cache + quantization. Even Track A and B engineers must know this.

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