Conrad Mentoring Architecture — A Simpler Design
Replaces the reference design in Reference/ebfb827a80fe961c268595d6c7e9d623.jpg (「康莱德备赛 AI 协同技术方案」: ChatGPT + Coze + 飞书/多维表 + 云盘/OSS).
1. What the reference design proposes
Four "capability engines" wired across an 8-stage season:
| Engine | Role in the reference design |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 智能教练与内容共创 — topic guidance, Lean Canvas, Innovation Brief 结构共创与润色, Pitch 讲稿, mock Q&A |
| Coze | 工作流与自动化编排 — workflow nodes, knowledge-base retrieval, form→structured output, API publishing |
| 飞书/多维表 or Notion | 项目协作底座 — roles, weekly reports, task boards, milestone gates |
| 云盘/OSS | 文件与素材资产库 — documents, images, video raw footage, versioning |
Stages: 团队建档 → 兴趣探索 → 选题决策 → Lean Canvas → PBL 执行 → Innovation Brief 制作 → Video + Website → 决选准备与路演训练.
The stage decomposition is good. It maps correctly onto the real competition. The problems are in the tooling and — more seriously — in the task-to-tool assignment.
2. Three problems
Problem 1 — The compliance problem (disqualifying)
The 任务—工具分工矩阵 assigns ChatGPT as 主导 ("leading") on:
- Brief 撰写 (brief writing)
- 视频脚本 (video script)
- Website 文案 (website copy)
- Lean Canvas (共创 / co-creation)
Conrad's rules say teams self-certify that they have not used AI for writing, programming, or key innovation; AI is permitted "only for partial, original submission writing" (knowledge-base/01-competition-facts.md §8).
An architecture whose central diagram places AI in the leading role on three submitted artifacts is an architecture for producing disqualifiable submissions. This is not a tuning issue — it is the design's organising principle, and it has to be inverted.
Note the asymmetry that makes this expensive: scrutiny scales with success ("we examine this more so for teams that show finalist potential"), and the Summit is a live Power Pitch and Expo Q&A. The failure mode is not "we get caught early" — it is "we get caught in Houston."
Problem 2 — The complexity problem
Four systems, four accounts, four auth models, four failure modes, and a cross-product of integrations to maintain — for a workload of, realistically, 5–20 teams on a 6-month cycle producing ~15 documents each.
Coze in particular is load-bearing for very little: "表单输入 → 结构化输出" and "自动生成阶段清单" are template-filling. Building and maintaining low-code workflow graphs to do this is a permanent maintenance surface in exchange for automating something a Markdown template already does.
The user's instinct — "especially the use of codes, and I don't think it's good" — is right. Every Coze node is a piece of logic that lives in a proprietary GUI, can't be diffed, can't be reviewed, can't be version-controlled, and breaks silently when the platform changes.
Problem 3 — The knowledge problem
The reference design has no source of truth. There is a 知识库检索 node in Coze, but nothing specifies what is in it or how it stays correct. Conrad's rules, deadlines, fees, special category, and rubric sub-criteria change every year — the 2025-26 guide added 25 sub-criteria that didn't exist in the 2024-25 materials.
An architecture without a versioned, verifiable knowledge base will confidently coach last year's competition. This is the quiet failure mode that produces good-looking, wrong advice.
3. The proposed design
One principle
Files are the system. Skills are the behaviour. Humans write the submissions.
Everything that is knowledge, process, or state is a plain file in a git repository. Everything the AI does is a skill — a versioned Markdown file describing a procedure. Everything submitted to Conrad is typed by a student.
The stack
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ONE REPOSITORY (git) │
│ │
│ knowledge-base/ canonical facts, rubric, judge playbook, │
│ winner data ← versioned, dated, cited │
│ conrad-skills/ 12 skills = the entire coaching behaviour │
│ topic-engine/ the discovery method │
│ curriculum/ slides, notes, worksheets │
│ teams/<team>/ one folder per team = all their state │
│ ├─ 00-charter.md roles, goals, calendar │
│ ├─ 01-topic-card.md topic engine output │
│ ├─ 02-lean-canvas.md 12 answers │
│ ├─ 03-brief.md 10 answers ← STUDENT-WRITTEN ONLY │
│ ├─ 04-evidence/ sources, expert emails, test data │
│ ├─ 05-video/ script, storyboard, cut list │
│ ├─ 06-website/ copy, brand notes, link │
│ ├─ 07-mock-judging/ dated scorecards + judge-style notes │
│ └─ CONTRIBUTION-LOG.md who wrote what, AI tools used │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
┌─────────┴─────────┐
│ Claude Code │ reads the repo, runs skills
└─────────┬─────────┘
│
┌───────────────┼───────────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
Google Drive Canva/Wix YouTube
(video raw) (website) (video host)
── only where a browser is genuinely required ──
That is the whole system. One repo, one AI surface, three external tools used only where the competition itself forces a browser (video hosting, website building, large media).
What each of the four reference engines becomes
| Reference engine | Replacement | Why |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT (coach + co-writer) | Claude Code + the 12 skills — coach, mock judge, and never co-writer | Skills are versioned, reviewable, and can be constrained to refuse to draft submitted text. A chat window cannot. |
| Coze (workflow orchestration) | Deleted. Skills contain the procedures; git is the state machine; the milestone gates are a checklist | The orchestration was template-filling. Markdown templates + a skill that walks them do the same job with zero maintenance surface. |
| 飞书/Notion (collaboration) | The teams/ folders + git history (+ optional Notion mirror for parents) |
Task boards, weekly reports, and version history are what git already is. One folder per team is the project board. |
| 云盘/OSS (assets) | Git for text; Google Drive for raw video only | 3,000-word briefs are text. Only raw video footage genuinely needs object storage. |
Why "no code" is the right instinct — and what replaces it
The reference design's code lives in Coze workflow graphs. Replacing it with Python scripts would be no better. The actual replacement for orchestration logic is prose procedures in skill files:
- A skill is a Markdown file. It can be read by a human mentor, diffed in a PR, and corrected in place.
- It has no runtime, no dependencies, no API keys, and no platform to deprecate it.
- When Conrad changes the rubric, you edit one Markdown file, not a workflow graph and a knowledge base.
The only executable code in this design is optional: a validator that counts words per brief question against the official limits. That is a 30-line script, and it is genuinely useful because the word limits are hard-enforced by the portal.
4. The compliance inversion
The single most important change. The reference matrix is rewritten with AI's role explicitly demoted on every submitted artifact:
| Task | Reference design | This design |
|---|---|---|
| 选题启发 Topic ideation | ChatGPT 主导 | Student generates; conrad-topic-finder runs the process and refuses to supply candidates |
| 竞品分析 Competitor analysis | ChatGPT 主导 | Student searches; AI teaches search technique and stress-tests findings |
| Lean Canvas | ChatGPT 共创 | Student writes 12 answers; AI critiques against the 40-word limits |
| Brief 撰写 | ChatGPT 主导 | ❌ AI never drafts. Student writes; AI mock-judges the draft and returns judge-style comments |
| 视频脚本 | ChatGPT 主导 | ❌ AI never drafts. AI critiques structure and rehearses hostile Q&A |
| Website 文案 | ChatGPT 主导 | ❌ AI never drafts. AI reviews brand consistency against the brief |
| 路演训练 Pitch training | ChatGPT 模拟评委 | ✅ Unchanged — this is the best idea in the reference design. Mock judging is exactly what AI should do here. |
| Research / source finding | — | ✅ Allowed, logged, and cited in the attribution PDF |
The rule, in one line:
AI may evaluate, question, and teach. AI may not produce anything that is submitted.
This is enforced structurally, not by good intentions: every skill in conrad-skills/ that touches a submitted artifact carries a hard refusal clause in its instructions, and conrad-integrity-guard maintains the contribution log.
The payoff is not only compliance. Mock judging produces better briefs than co-writing does, because the student has to fix the problems themselves — which is the only way they can defend the work at the Summit.
5. Season operating model
Eight stages preserved from the reference design (they were right), retooled and gated.
| # | Stage | Window | Skill | Gate to pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Team charter | Aug | conrad-coach-ops |
Roles named, calendar agreed, coach registered |
| 2 | Asset inventory + domain scan | Sep | conrad-topic-finder (Stage 0–1) |
12 territories, 5+ named team assets |
| 3 | Topic decision | Sep–Oct | conrad-topic-finder (Stage 2–7) |
Topic card complete, 4 kill gates passed |
| 4 | Lean Canvas | Oct (due Oct 30) | conrad-lean-canvas |
12 answers within word limits, submitted early (rolling review) |
| 5 | Evidence build | Nov–Dec | conrad-evidence-builder |
≥3 evidence rungs; expert contacted |
| 6 | Brief + business model | Dec | conrad-innovation-brief, conrad-market-finance, conrad-ip-defensibility |
Draft scoring ≥75 on internal mock judging |
| 7 | Video + website | Dec–Jan (due Jan 8) | conrad-video-website |
Links open in incognito; video <5:00 and <800 MB |
| 8 | Summit prep | Feb–Apr | conrad-power-pitch |
Survives hostile Q&A without notes |
Continuous, all season: conrad-judge-simulator (mock judging at each gate) and conrad-integrity-guard (contribution log).
The critical structural insight the reference design misses: the Oct 30 → Jan 8 gap is 10 weeks spanning winter holidays, and it is where teams die. Stage 5 (evidence) must start in November, not December. The gate at Stage 4 should therefore require the evidence plan, not just the canvas.
6. Comparison
| Reference design | This design | |
|---|---|---|
| Systems to operate | 4 (+ integrations) | 1 repo + 1 AI surface + 3 browser tools |
| Accounts per team | ChatGPT, Coze, Feishu/Notion, OSS | Git + Drive (+ Canva/Wix, YouTube) |
| Orchestration logic | Coze workflow graphs (GUI, undiffable) | Markdown skills (readable, diffable, reviewable) |
| Source of truth | Unspecified knowledge base | knowledge-base/, versioned, dated, cited, with a refresh procedure |
| AI role on submissions | Leading author | Never author. Evaluator only |
| Compliance posture | Violates the AI self-certification | Structurally enforced + audit log |
| Maintenance when rules change | Update knowledge base + workflow nodes + prompts | Edit one Markdown file, bump rubric_version |
| Multi-team scaling | Per-team Coze/Feishu setup | mkdir teams/<name> |
| Cost | 4 subscriptions | Claude subscription + free git |
| Survives platform deprecation | No | Yes — plain text |
7. Migration path
For someone already running the reference stack:
- Stop first, migrate second. Immediately remove AI from the drafting role on Brief, video script, and website copy. This is the compliance fix and it needs no tooling change.
- Create the repo.
knowledge-base/,conrad-skills/,teams/. Clone this repository as the base. - Port the knowledge base. Anything in the Coze 知识库 that is a Conrad fact → verify against
conrad.spacecenter.org→ intoknowledge-base/01-competition-facts.md. Discard the rest. - Retire Coze. For each workflow, ask: is it a template, a checklist, or a reminder? Templates →
teams/_template/. Checklists → the gate table in §5. Reminders → a calendar. Nothing else survives. - Keep Feishu/Notion only for parent-facing status, if the audience needs it. Mirror from git; don't make it the source of truth.
- Keep the drive for raw video only.
- Start the contribution log for every active team, retroactively where possible.
What to keep from the reference design — credit where due:
- The 8-stage decomposition
- 模拟评委 (mock judging) — the best idea in it, now the primary AI role
- Milestone gates
- Central asset archiving for video
8. Honest limitations
- This design assumes the mentor is comfortable with git. If they are not, the
teams/folders work in Dropbox or Drive with a shared naming convention — you lose diffs and history, which is a real loss for the contribution log, but the rest holds. - Students will still use AI on their own. The architecture cannot prevent this. What it can do is make the legitimate use easy and logged, and make the illegitimate use obviously risky by putting the Summit Q&A reality in front of them early.
conrad-integrity-guardis a coaching tool, not a detector. - The 12 skills are new and unvalidated against real outcomes. They encode a real judge's materials and five real judged briefs, but no team has yet run a season on them. Treat the rubric prescores as calibrated estimates, not predictions, until a cohort completes.
- No published price data exists for the commercial market, so the competitive positioning in
knowledge-base/04-mentoring-market.md§5 is qualitative.