Slow is not a metric; it is a mood. We teach learners to translate mood into journal fields: unit, priority, and bounded time windows. The first prompt is always “what changed since the last successful health check?” because it forces a timeline instead of a vibe.
The second prompt asks for cgroup pressure indicators when CPU looks idle but latency climbs. The third prompt is the honest “do we have packet loss or DNS weirdness?” split—because mixing those signals wastes everyone’s afternoon.
These prompts appear in multiple courses, not as trivia, but as reusable checklists taped next to terminals. We still expect wrong turns; the goal is faster recovery from wrong turns.
We do not ship proprietary agents for this work. Your laptop, a browser, and the lab host are enough, which keeps the skill portable across employers.