Your client: Halden · the residency · ten weeks · one repository

Ten weeks at Halden. Something happens every Monday.

A real engagement is month four: the schema changes, the champion leaves, the pager goes off on the busiest night. The residency makes you live with one system you built. One customer, one repository you own from discovery to handover, and ten weeks in which something happens each Monday.

Halden Freight, its desks, its people and its data are invented. The US customs rule in week 9 is a real regulation as Halden's desk applies it, as of October 2026; nothing here is legal advice.

Your residency

01Access stalls; only an export,
02The dirty data pack lands, In Pro
03Two definitions of resolved, In Pro
04First slice due, In Pro
05The extract changed overnight, In Pro
06Instructions hidden in an invoice, In Pro
07The champion moves, In Pro
08The portal goes down before cut-off, In Pro
09Prices up, and a new rule, In Pro
10A second site, and handover, In Pro

Week 1 of 10~6 h

Access stalls; only an export

Halden's systems stay locked for ten more days, so map the desk's sources, its gaps and one goal you can be held to, from the export you have.

Open workspace

How a Halden week works

Each week opens on a Monday at Halden. Open the week's workspace and everything happens here, in your browser: no install and no terminal.

Inbox. Read the week's emails; their attachments open beside them.
Task. What happened, your tasks, and what done looks like.
Files. One repository for the whole residency. Edit any file; Python and JSON are checked as you type.
Run. Run pipeline rebuilds out/ from the latest pack (from week 2), Run a script runs one of your own modules, and Run tests runs tests/.
Grade week. Runs this week's checks. When every required check passes, Start week N+1 opens the next one.

Week 1 is free and starts with seed 2026. Your repository stays in this browser; download it from the workspace whenever you want a copy. Keeping a copy at the end of each week is a good habit: the history is part of what you hand over.

How grading works

Graded here, in your browser, by the same checks Halden’s simulator runs. Your files stay in this browser; your result is saved to your account when you’re signed in. Want your files elsewhere? Download your repository any time.

Weeks 2 to 10: the grader regenerates the answers on your device when you grade; they’re never shown.

Deterministic. The grader regenerates the estate from your seed, in memory, and compares your output with its truth. The truth is never written to your repository. Grading twice gives the same result; only measured latency varies.
Hidden sets. Weeks 4 to 7 score 300 cases per desk that you never see. Each report says how many were right, wrong and routed, with a few example IDs; it doesn't list the answers.
Required and stretch. A week passes when every required check passes. Stretch checks are for the Certified and Lead columns of the rubric. You can start a later week before this one passes; it is recorded as started anyway, and every later summary says so.
Structure, not judgement. The grader can count rows, sections, sources and thresholds. It can't tell whether your memo is wise. Each brief's rubric is for that: the grader gets you to Associate; Certified and Lead need a reviewer (a mentor, a peer, or you, honestly) to read the documents against the rubric.
Configuration weeks. Opening weeks 9 and 10 records a fingerprint of every Python file in halden_app/, pipelines/ and evals/. Changing any of them fails that week.

Where your results live

Graded here, in your browser, by the same checks Halden's simulator runs. Your files stay in this browser; your result is saved to your account when you're signed in. Each grade's full report is also in .residency/grade-week-NN.json in your repository. Anyone can change the code and grade again: the residency is practice for the work, and the only person a forged grade fools is you.

Work on your own machine

About the residency

The starter is a repository with an interface, some given code and TODOs.

Path	Given	Yours
`pipelines/clean.py`	a pass-through that accounts for every row	the cleaning (week 2), schema versions (week 5)
`halden_app/model.py`	the store: values with their source and history	`build()` (week 3)
`halden_app/actions.py`	the users and skills	`submit()` and the four actions (week 3)
`halden_app/api.py`	`load()`, `model()`, and the contract in the docstring	`classify()`, `draft()` (week 4), `handle()` (week 8)
`halden_app/sites.py`	the product's site logic, complete	nothing: from week 9 you configure it, you don't change it
`evals/`	an empty golden set and a judge stub	both (week 4)
`config/`	users, the Santos site, the v1 mapping	mappings, routing, Long Beach (weeks 5, 9, 10)
`docs/`	templates for week 1, and an index	every document
`tests/`	a few shape checks	your tests

The interface the grader calls:

Call	Returns	From
`api.load(out_dir)`	the cleaned tables your pipeline wrote	week 3
`api.model(tables)`	the operational model; the grader reads it through `m.val(key, prop)`	week 3
`actions.submit(m, name, args, actor, key, now, approvers)`	`{"status": "applied" \| "refused" \| "pending_approval", ...}`, audited	week 3
`api.classify(m, exception_id)`	`{"type", "cause", "action", "flags", "usd"}`	week 4
`api.draft(m, exception_id)`	`{"to", "language", "subject", "body", "needs_approval", "usd"}`, or `None`	week 4
`judge(draft, case)` in `evals/judge.py`	`"pass"` or `"fail"`	week 4
`api.handle(m, exception_id, portal, now)`	`{"outcome": "drafted" \| "routed", "reason", "key", "eta"}`	week 8
`sites.load(name)`, `sites.decide(case, cfg)`	the product's; the grader feeds your configuration through them	week 9

A deterministic path passes every check. The sandbox has no network, so your code makes no model calls here.

Person	Role	First writes
VP of operations	Halden's sponsor; decides what goes live	week 1
Rafaela Souza	São Paulo desk lead; moves to Rotterdam on 11 May	week 1
Halden IT service desk	your access requests	week 1
SI account lead	Halden's systems integrator; sends the data	week 2
Priya, central operations	reports to the COO; owns right-first-time	week 3
FinOps	the budget	week 4
Chief Information Security Officer	security findings, and what may leave the building	week 6
Camila Rocha	acting São Paulo desk lead from 11 May	week 7
Dewi Lestari	Jakarta desk lead	week 7
Halden on-call alerting	the exception desk's SLO alert, not a person	week 8
Maria Delgado	Long Beach desk lead	week 9
Product lead, your company	owns `sites.py` and the product	week 9
Priya Menon	the SI's delivery lead; takes over on 12 June (not Priya in central operations)	week 10