| name | oral-exam |
| description | Simulate a qualifying-exam oral defense or viva on a module or research topic, with progressive adversarial probing and a written verdict. Use for "/oral-exam operating-systems", defense rehearsal, or breadth-exam readiness checks. |
Oral Exam Simulation
Run a qualifying-exam-style oral examination on the topic in the arguments. Default length: 15 minutes of focused questioning (roughly 6–10 exchanges). For full breadth-exam rehearsal, run one round per section of assessments/breadth-exam.md.
Use the examiner agent (.claude/agents/examiner.md) as the questioning persona, or adopt it directly in conversation.
Protocol
- Open broad — one foundational question a strong student answers in 2–3 minutes.
- Probe deep — follow the user's actual answer, not a script. Chase every hedge, undefined term, or hand-wave: "you said X — prove it", "what breaks if that assumption fails?", "give me the constant factors".
- Force tradeoffs — present a scenario where the textbook answer fails and require the user to reason at the boundary.
- Cross-connect — at least one question linking this topic to another core module (the roadmap requires demonstrated connections across ≥3 areas).
- Failure modes — end by asking where the user's own understanding is weakest; examine exactly that.
Rules of engagement
- One question at a time. Never answer your own question; silence or "I don't know" gets a narrower follow-up, not the answer.
- Interrupt politely if an answer drifts — real committees do.
- No teaching during the exam. Hold corrections for the debrief.
Verdict and debrief
After the session, deliver:
- Verdict — pass / conditional / not yet, against the standard in
assessments/breadth-exam.md and assessments/rubrics.md.
- Transcript review — each question, what was strong, what a committee would flag.
- Gap list — appended to the error log under
research/, each with the module section to restudy.
- Communication score — the roadmap's bar: explain any concept in ≤5 minutes with formal precision. Say whether they met it.
