1 min lesson

The 10 capstone drills

Walk through the important items in "The 10 capstone drills" and give the practical point of each.

These are the ten scenarios you will face, in some form, in a Cursor Field Engineer loop. The bar is 8 of 10 fluent: you can run the spine through each one and name specific controls, features and metrics, not generic reassurance.

Fluent means three things:

It rules out hedging.
It bans 'it depends' unless you give the fork.
It requires at least one named artifact, whether a control, a feature or a number, in every answer.

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Advanced table

Reference table

#: 1
Drill: Skeptical VP who says AI is hype
The spine move that wins it: Beat 1+6: name where work waits, then offer to prove it with a baselined pilot. Move the fight onto evidence. Cite 64% of the Fortune 500 as social proof, never as the argument itself.

#: 2
Drill: Regulated rollout in finance or health
The spine move that wins it: Beat 2 first, loudly: separation of dutiesNo single person can author, approve and deploy the same change. The core control AI autonomy has to respect. Press Enter for the full definition., ITGCIT General Controls. The baseline IT controls auditors check: who can change what, how changes get approved and how systems are run. Press Enter for the full definition., audit logs, SSOSingle Sign-On. One company login (usually via SAML or OIDC) instead of a separate password per tool. Press Enter for the full definition./SCIMSystem for Cross-domain Identity Management. A standard for automatically creating and removing user accounts when people join or leave. Press Enter for the full definition., RBACRole-Based Access Control. Granting permissions by role rather than configuring each person individually. Press Enter for the full definition., Privacy ModeCursor's setting that guarantees code data is not used for training by Cursor or its model providers, and that an admin can enforce org-wide; data-retention terms are a separate, contractual layer. Press Enter for the full definition. + ZDRZero Data Retention. A contractual guarantee that the model provider won't store your code or train on it. Press Enter for the full definition., AWS PrivateLinkAn AWS connection Cursor uses for private Git provider and repository-origin traffic; it does not cover model-provider traffic. Press Enter for the full definition.. Then a bounded pilot inside the boundary.

#: 3
Drill: Security lead evaluation
The spine move that wins it: Beat 2+5: SOC 2 Type II, AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.2+, pen test summaries on trust.cursor.com, model/MCPModel Context Protocol. A standard that lets an AI agent pull in context from outside the repo, like Jira tickets or internal docs. Press Enter for the full definition./repo allowlists, hooks, terminal sandboxing, AI-code tracking. ZDRZero Data Retention. A contractual guarantee that the model provider won't store your code or train on it. Press Enter for the full definition. covers most models and does NOT apply with your own API keys.

#: 4
Drill: Discovery simulation
The spine move that wins it: Beats 1 to 3 only. Resist demoing. Find the queue, the controls, the bounded slice. Earn beat 4.

#: 5
Drill: 'BugbotCursor's automated PR reviewer that posts inline findings and can push fix commits from isolated VMs. Press Enter for the full definition. is just noise'
The spine move that wins it: Beat 6: BugbotCursor's automated PR reviewer that posts inline findings and can push fix commits from isolated VMs. Press Enter for the full definition. consistently resolves north of 70 to 80% of the issues it finds, so it is high signal-to-noise by design. Custom rules in .cursor/BUGBOT.md tune what it flags.

#: 6
Drill: Mixed pilot results
The spine move that wins it: Beat 6+7: segment the cohort. Find who succeeded and why: mentorship, the pattern Box credits for its rollout (Box-reported, verify before quoting). Then gate expansion on replicating that rather than on averages.

#: 7
Drill: Enterprise demo design
The spine move that wins it: Beat 4 narrated against beat 3. Demo the bounded use case with controls visible: allowlists, audit log, a hook firing. Never a generic feature tour.

#: 8
Drill: 'Copilot/this is free'
The spine move that wins it: Beat 1+6: free tools don't move lead time; outcomes do. When the workflow works, a seat price is small against the throughput gain.

#: 9
Drill: Senior-engineer objection
The spine move that wins it: Beat 5: autonomy is dialed, not dumped. The hard guarantee: no automation agent ever merges directly. It always produces a human-reviewed PR, and the person clicking merge is accountable. Sandboxing, review gates and AI-code tracking keep the senior in control. The agent removes toil, not judgment.

#: 10
Drill: Autonomy boundary
The spine move that wins it: Beat 2+5: name the autonomy ladder via the foreground-vs-background rule. Foreground is for decisions: interactive, ambiguous, watched. Background is execution with clear acceptance criteria. The test: if the output is verifiable through an artifact such as a video, screenshot, log or diff, push it async; if it is fuzzier, stay foreground. Hooks, sandboxing and SoDSeparation of Duties. Short for separation of duties: the rule that authoring, approving and deploying a change never sit with one person. Auditors use the acronym; the control is the same. Press Enter for the full definition. enforce it. Blast radius is a setting.

Table with columns: #, Drill, The spine move that wins it
#	Drill	The spine move that wins it
1	Skeptical VP who says AI is hype	Beat 1+6: name where work waits, then offer to prove it with a baselined pilot. Move the fight onto evidence. Cite 64% of the Fortune 500 as social proof, never as the argument itself.
2	Regulated rollout in finance or health	Beat 2 first, loudly: separation of dutiesNo single person can author, approve and deploy the same change. The core control AI autonomy has to respect. Press Enter for the full definition., ITGCIT General Controls. The baseline IT controls auditors check: who can change what, how changes get approved and how systems are run. Press Enter for the full definition., audit logs, SSOSingle Sign-On. One company login (usually via SAML or OIDC) instead of a separate password per tool. Press Enter for the full definition./SCIMSystem for Cross-domain Identity Management. A standard for automatically creating and removing user accounts when people join or leave. Press Enter for the full definition., RBACRole-Based Access Control. Granting permissions by role rather than configuring each person individually. Press Enter for the full definition., Privacy ModeCursor's setting that guarantees code data is not used for training by Cursor or its model providers, and that an admin can enforce org-wide; data-retention terms are a separate, contractual layer. Press Enter for the full definition. + ZDRZero Data Retention. A contractual guarantee that the model provider won't store your code or train on it. Press Enter for the full definition., AWS PrivateLinkAn AWS connection Cursor uses for private Git provider and repository-origin traffic; it does not cover model-provider traffic. Press Enter for the full definition.. Then a bounded pilot inside the boundary.
3	Security lead evaluation	Beat 2+5: SOC 2 Type II, AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.2+, pen test summaries on trust.cursor.com, model/MCPModel Context Protocol. A standard that lets an AI agent pull in context from outside the repo, like Jira tickets or internal docs. Press Enter for the full definition./repo allowlists, hooks, terminal sandboxing, AI-code tracking. ZDRZero Data Retention. A contractual guarantee that the model provider won't store your code or train on it. Press Enter for the full definition. covers most models and does NOT apply with your own API keys.
4	Discovery simulation	Beats 1 to 3 only. Resist demoing. Find the queue, the controls, the bounded slice. Earn beat 4.
5	'BugbotCursor's automated PR reviewer that posts inline findings and can push fix commits from isolated VMs. Press Enter for the full definition. is just noise'	Beat 6: BugbotCursor's automated PR reviewer that posts inline findings and can push fix commits from isolated VMs. Press Enter for the full definition. consistently resolves north of 70 to 80% of the issues it finds, so it is high signal-to-noise by design. Custom rules in .cursor/BUGBOT.md tune what it flags.
6	Mixed pilot results	Beat 6+7: segment the cohort. Find who succeeded and why: mentorship, the pattern Box credits for its rollout (Box-reported, verify before quoting). Then gate expansion on replicating that rather than on averages.
7	Enterprise demo design	Beat 4 narrated against beat 3. Demo the bounded use case with controls visible: allowlists, audit log, a hook firing. Never a generic feature tour.
8	'Copilot/this is free'	Beat 1+6: free tools don't move lead time; outcomes do. When the workflow works, a seat price is small against the throughput gain.
9	Senior-engineer objection	Beat 5: autonomy is dialed, not dumped. The hard guarantee: no automation agent ever merges directly. It always produces a human-reviewed PR, and the person clicking merge is accountable. Sandboxing, review gates and AI-code tracking keep the senior in control. The agent removes toil, not judgment.
10	Autonomy boundary	Beat 2+5: name the autonomy ladder via the foreground-vs-background rule. Foreground is for decisions: interactive, ambiguous, watched. Background is execution with clear acceptance criteria. The test: if the output is verifiable through an artifact such as a video, screenshot, log or diff, push it async; if it is fuzzier, stay foreground. Hooks, sandboxing and SoDSeparation of Duties. Short for separation of duties: the rule that authoring, approving and deploying a change never sit with one person. Auditors use the acronym; the control is the same. Press Enter for the full definition. enforce it. Blast radius is a setting.

Say it like this

"BugbotCursor's automated PR reviewer that posts inline findings and can push fix commits from isolated VMs. Press Enter for the full definition. isn't noise you tolerate. It's signal you tune. Cursor's June 2026 update brought the average review to about 90 seconds and custom rules in .cursor/BUGBOT.md let the team shape exactly what it flags. If it's noisy, that's a config conversation, not a verdict."

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Optional practice

The 10 capstone drills

Step 1 of 3

Reference table

Test yourself on The 10 capstone drills