Capstone Scope

Define the scope, users, acceptance criteria, and skeleton for your final Go project before writing the first function.

6 min readProgramming Foundations (Go)Code

Choose Your Project

For the capstone you will build either a JSON HTTP service or an enhanced version of the task tracker CLI from Module 06. Both are real, deployable programs.

Option	What you build	New skills practiced
Task tracker (CLI)	Full CRUD CLI with file storage, tests, and a release binary	Flags, file I/O, JSON, testing, cross-compilation
JSON HTTP service	REST API with handlers, middleware, JSON responses, and graceful shutdown	net/http, JSON encoding, context, signal handling

Pick the one that excites you

Both projects cover the same Go fundamentals. The HTTP service is closer to real SRE tooling (think exporters, health-check servers, webhook handlers). The CLI is simpler to test and distribute. Either choice is valid.

Define Users and Commands

Before writing code, write down who uses your tool and what they can do. A one-page spec prevents feature creep and gives you a clear finishing line.

CLI spec example


# User: any engineer on a Unix/Windows machine
# Purpose: manage personal tasks from the terminal

# Commands:
tasker add   -title "Deploy service" [-tag ops] [-priority high]
tasker list  [-tag ops] [-priority high] [-done false]
tasker done  -id <task-id>
tasker delete -id <task-id>
tasker help

# Output: clean terminal table, JSON with --json flag

Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria are the bar that defines done. Write them before coding so you know when to stop adding features.

All five commands work end-to-end against a real ~/.tasker/tasks.json.
Invalid input (missing -title, unknown command) prints a helpful error and exits with code 1.
Concurrent writes are safe — the file is written atomically.
Test coverage ≥ 80% on internal/ packages.
Cross-compiled binaries exist for linux/amd64, darwin/arm64, windows/amd64.
Binary includes embedded version, commit, and build date.

Project Skeleton

Initialise the full project


mkdir -p tasker/{cmd/tasker,internal/{task,cli},testdata}
cd tasker
go mod init github.com/thesyscoder/tasker

# Create placeholder files
touch cmd/tasker/main.go
touch internal/task/task.go internal/task/store.go internal/task/store_test.go
touch internal/cli/commands.go internal/cli/commands_test.go
touch Makefile

cat Makefile

Makefile for the capstone


VERSION ?= $(shell git describe --tags --always --dirty 2>/dev/null || echo dev)
COMMIT  ?= $(shell git rev-parse --short HEAD 2>/dev/null || echo none)
DATE    ?= $(shell date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")
LDFLAGS  = -X main.version=$(VERSION) -X main.commit=$(COMMIT) -X main.buildDate=$(DATE)

.PHONY: build test lint release

build:
	go build -ldflags "$(LDFLAGS)" -o tasker ./cmd/tasker

test:
	go test -race -cover ./...

lint:
	go vet ./...
	go fmt ./...

release:
	GOOS=linux   GOARCH=amd64 go build -ldflags "$(LDFLAGS)" -o dist/tasker_linux_amd64 ./cmd/tasker
	GOOS=darwin  GOARCH=arm64 go build -ldflags "$(LDFLAGS)" -o dist/tasker_darwin_arm64 ./cmd/tasker
	GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build -ldflags "$(LDFLAGS)" -o dist/tasker_windows_amd64.exe ./cmd/tasker

Mark this lesson complete to store local progress and unlock a cleaner resume path the next time you visit.

Stage 1 · Code

Capstone — Ship a Real Tool