Three artifacts a person could ship this week: a public page, a reply, and the brief that says what you will not claim. That is the track.
Why this matters
A one-pager with no brief will grow a slogan the next time you are tired. A reply with no page will invent policy in the moment. A brief that never meets the public words will not catch the fake testimonial. This capstone binds them.
The standard is Russell Tech: you could leave this on a shop table. No invented quotes. No fake testimonials. No faces you do not have the right to use. No theater.
Teach
One thread: capstone — comms — [job]. Paste the one-pager and claim table, the extract and reply, and the internal brief. Reconcile. Do not start from “write me a communications plan.”
Product A — Public page or one-pager (cleaned)
Headline, three to five sections, call to action you named, claim table still attached. If the brief forbade a line (“customers are asking”), that line cannot survive on the page.
Product B — Reply (send-ready)
The inbound extract plus the reply plus the send checklist. Still no invented prior conversation. If the page and the reply disagree on hours, price, or who you are, you decide. Grok does not average.
Product C — Internal brief (one page)
Decision, tagged facts, will-not-say, open questions. If you searched, the URL and your HOLD/UNVERIFIED stay visible. Talking points only restate facts.
Integrity pass (not optional)
After the three exist, Grok plays a careless comms intern:
Attack this pack.
List every:
- quote or testimonial that has no pasted sentence and permission
- number or year that I did not type and that has no opened URL
- likeness (face, child, named official, fake job photo)
- unsigned promise (date, dollar, “we already…”)
Do not rewrite yet.
You accept one patch — usually a killed quote or a NEED on a number — and reprint. A pack that has never been attacked is a first draft.
What you still own. Send. Publish. Whether the page goes up. Grok drafts. You sign.
What stays out. Real customer legal names if you need a stand-in, student last names, medical, unpublished proposals you do not own, photos of people who did not agree. Use roles: “Commenter A,” “Grant officer.”
Scope. One public artifact, one inbound, one decision. Not a brand book. Not a six-month content calendar. If you want a second page, that is another afternoon.
Done. You will publish or hand the page, send or file the reply, and open the brief before the next public sentence. Write those dates. If you will not, the pack is a class exercise and the rubric fails you.
Worked example
Same two-person shop. Capstone thread gets the “What we do” page, the Saturday-hours comment reply, and the brief that said do not post Saturday hours.
Grok’s first merge put “trusted locally” back on the page, added “as we told you last week” to the reply, and offered an Imagine family at the shop door. The owner sent one message: “Delete every quote I did not paste, every plural customer I did not count, and every face.”
The reprint: page with four FACT lines and NO QUOTE; reply weekday-only, no percent, no flyer admission they could not see; brief still says do not post Saturday, will-not-say = “customers are asking.” Attack list showed the three kills. Dates: page goes up Friday; reply already sent; brief stays in the thread name for the partner.
That pack can sit on a table. A twelve-slide “voice and tone” deck cannot.
Your turn
Open grok.com. One new thread. Use this month’s real page, inbound, and decision. Redact as you paste.
Exercise d-comms-l04-e1
| Field | Value |
|---|
| whereToDo | grok.com |
| time | 35 min |
Copy-ready prompts
Message 1:
I am in Grok Mastery (Russell Tech), Pathway D, Writing & comms, capstone.
Reconcile these sources. Do not invent quotes, numbers, or faces.
[paste one-pager + claim table]
[paste extract + reply]
[paste internal brief]
Write:
A) Public page or one-pager (cleaned, claim table attached)
B) Send-ready reply + send checklist
C) Internal brief (tagged facts, will-not-say)
If a fact is missing, write UNKNOWN or NEED.
Do not add a second page or a content calendar.
Stop there.
Message 2:
Attack pass. Play a careless comms intern.
List quotes/testimonials without a pasted sentence, numbers without my type or an opened URL, likeness, unsigned promises.
Do not rewrite yet.
Message 3 (after you accept a patch):
Patch I accept: [one rail].
Reprint A, B, and C only.
Then:
- Ship check: what I will publish or send, and when
- Will-not-say: the one sentence that stays dead
- Session stamp: today's date and "Comms pack written by Grok in this thread."
Artifact to paste
- The reprinted page, reply, and brief.
- The attack list and the session stamp.
- Two lines from you:
I will ship on: plus a date.I will not say: plus the killed sentence.
Rubric
- Pass: All three are Grok-authored and stamped. Same real work. No invented quote, testimonial, or face. Attack pass exists. You name a ship date. Numbers are yours or labeled.
- Fail: A brand strategy. You typed it offline. A teaching unit. Fake praise. Missing stamp. Two unrelated jobs.
Common failure
The common failure is the content calendar. Twelve posts, a reel, a newsletter. Nothing is sendable Friday. Cut until one page, one reply, and one brief remain.
The other failure is integrity as a footer. Beautiful copy and a line that says “be accurate.” If the attack pass still finds a quote you do not have, you are not done.
What’s next
This track is done when the page is the one you will post and the reply is the one you will send. Trades, business, education, and field tracks are separate four-hour jobs if those are also your work.
