prompt-atlas-ecl

The Prompt Atlas — Twelve Quests for the Recursive Age

A free 12-week course syllabus mapping chapters 1–12 of The Prompt Atlas — Kronos Edition onto weekly quests. Companion text: PROMPT_ATLAS.md · Expansions: ../expansions/ · Prompts: ../prompts/


Instructor of record	(your name)
Credits	3 (semester) · 1.5 (quarter) · CEU eligible (15 PD hours)
Delivery	In-person · hybrid · fully online
Cohort size	8–80 (works in seminars and large lectures with TAs)
Prereqs	None. Curiosity, a notebook, and an account on one general-purpose AI assistant.

1. Course Description

The Prompt Atlas: Twelve Quests for the Recursive Age is a project-based course in AI literacy, ethics, and applied imagination. Students do not “learn to prompt” the way one learns a keyboard shortcut. They learn to co-author with intelligent systems across twelve domains — economics, art, science, psyche, space, survival, and play — leaving a portfolio that proves both judgment and craft.

The course is built around The Prompt Atlas — Kronos Edition, a free, openly published guide for AI and humanity. Each week’s quest anchors one Atlas chapter and culminates in a signed, dated artifact bound by an explicit provenance plate: who and what co-authored it, what was vetoed, and when it will sunset.

2. Learning Outcomes

Upon completion, students will be able to:

LO1 — Prompt craft. Compose, test, and revise prompts using the Atlas’s structured templates, including variables, anchors, anti-patterns, and aesthetic audits.
LO2 — Critical reading of AI output. Detect hallucination, style strip-mining, algorithmic uniformity, and silent provenance in machine-generated artifacts.
LO3 — Ethics in practice. Apply the Guide for AI & Humanity framework (consent, locality, reversibility, sunset) to every artifact they create.
LO4 — Interdisciplinary transfer. Move a single prompt pattern (e.g., a co-authorship plate) across at least four domains: economic, artistic, scientific, civic.
LO5 — Public artifact. Publish an Atlas Portfolio — 12 signed quests + 1 capstone — with a provenance plate, veto channel, and sunset rule that any non-specialist can read.
LO6 — Recursive reflection. Articulate how the same theme (e.g., integrity, aesthetics, memory) recurs and mutates across the Atlas — and across their own practice.

3. Required Materials (all free)

Primary text: PROMPT_ATLAS.md — The Prompt Atlas, Kronos Edition (2026).
Companion expansions: docs/prompt-atlas/expansions/ — worked examples, anti-patterns, “Try This” exercises.
Structured prompts: docs/prompt-atlas/prompts/ — chapter YAMLs for loading into your AI tool of choice.
One general-purpose AI assistant. Any modern chat-LLM with a free tier. The course is tool-agnostic; bring your own.
A field notebook. Paper or digital. The Atlas treats handwritten field notes as first-class artifacts.

Equity note. No student is required to purchase a paid AI subscription. Where a paid feature would help (e.g., image generation), a paper-and-pencil parallel is provided.

4. The Week Pattern (every quest follows this shape)

Each of the twelve weeks consists of the same six beats so that students always know what to expect:

Beat	Time	Purpose
1 · Premise	10 min	A short mythic framing — the door into the chapter
2 · Field Notes	60–90 min	Read the canonical chapter + its expansion; annotate by hand
3 · Co-Creation	60–120 min	The hands-on AI exercise — the week’s signature quest
4 · Field Test	30–60 min	Apply, share, or perform the artifact outside the classroom container
5 · Council	45 min	Peer review using the Guide for AI & Humanity rubric
6 · Logbook	30 min	Write a 250-word reflection + complete the provenance plate

Weekly deliverable: one Quest Artifact + Provenance Plate + Reflection. Uploaded to the student’s Atlas Portfolio repo.

5. The Twelve Quests

Mapping: Week N ↔ Chapter N of PROMPT_ATLAS.md (Chapters 13–14 — Carnival of Prompts, Wonder as Survival Strategy — are reserved for the Festival Week and the Capstone.)

🪙 Week 1 — The Honest Ledger

Quest: Chapter 1 · Profits with Integrity · expansion

Premise. Every civilization keeps two ledgers: the one it shows and the one it hides. This week we audit a real company — using AI as our forensic intern — and refuse to look away.

Co-Creation: Pick a public company or local institution. Co-author with an AI a two-column “Honest Ledger” — declared value vs. displaced value (externalities, invisible labor, ecological debt). Source every claim.
Field Test: Send the ledger (anonymized) to the institution’s public-feedback channel, or post to a class forum.
Deliverable: The ledger + a 250-word note on what the AI missed and what it got uncomfortably right.
Ethics check: Did you cite living people? Did you give the institution a right of reply? Sunset date for the published version?
Rubric anchors: LO2, LO3, LO5.

🌿 Week 2 — The Economy as a Forest

Quest: Chapter 2 · Economics as Ecology · expansion

Premise. A market is not a machine. It is a forest. This week we redesign one local supply chain as a successional ecology — what is mycelium, what is canopy, what is rot returning to soil?

Co-Creation: Choose a local supply chain (your cafeteria, your campus bookstore, a single product from your kitchen). With AI assistance, produce an Ecology Map: roles played by each actor (pollinator, decomposer, keystone, invasive).
Field Test: Interview one human in the chain. Compare their account to the AI’s model. Annotate divergences.
Deliverable: A one-page diagram + the interview transcript + the AI’s three biggest errors.
Rubric anchors: LO1, LO2, LO4.

🎨 Week 3 — The Mythwright’s Apprentice ⭐ (the spec week)

Quest: Chapter 3 · The AI Aesthetics Frontier · expansion

Premise. Long before alphabets, humans bargained with the dark by telling stories. This week, you and a machine will co-write a myth — a brand-new origin story for a thing that didn’t have one yet (a traffic light, a USB-C port, a missing sock, the WiFi password).

Co-Creation:
1. Pick your thing. Name it. Name its enemy.
2. Draft three opening sentences yourself, by hand. Then hand them to the AI and ask for three competing continuations — each in a different mythic register (Norse, Yoruba, Polynesian, cyberpunk).
3. Veto, splice, and rewrite. No paragraph survives unchanged. Mark in two colors: yours and the machine’s.
4. End with a canon audit (per Ch. 3 expansion): whose voices did the AI draw on? Whose are missing? Name three living traditions you chose not to imitate, and say why.
Field Test: Read it aloud, in 90 seconds, to someone outside the class. Record their face.
Deliverable: The myth (≤ 600 words) + the two-color manuscript + a provenance plate naming the human author, the AI model, the canons drawn from, and the sunset date.
Ethics check: No “in the style of” a living artist without consent. No sacred or closed traditions appropriated. Plate must be machine-readable (front-matter YAML acceptable).
Rubric anchors: LO1, LO3, LO5, LO6.

📜 Week 4 — The Translator’s Oath

Quest: Chapter 4 · Storytelling Across Civilizations · expansion

Premise. Translation is a betrayal that gives. This week we hold a piece of writing in two languages we ourselves do not speak — and ask an AI to bridge them, then catch it lying.

Co-Creation: Choose a short poem, proverb, or contract clause in language A. Have the AI render it in language B (and back). Compare to a human-produced translation. Document what the AI flattened, sharpened, or invented.
Field Test: Send your annotated comparison to a native speaker of either language for one round of correction.
Deliverable: A Translator’s Oath — three rules you will follow next time you ask a machine to cross a cultural border.
Rubric anchors: LO2, LO3.

🌌 Week 5 — Listening to the Noise

Quest: Chapter 5 · Quantum Bridges and Cosmic Noise · expansion

Premise. Most of the universe is signal we have decided to call noise. This week we make an AI confess what it filters out — and we re-listen.

Co-Creation: Pick a dataset you can fetch in 30 minutes (a city’s open-data air-quality feed; a SETI candidate set; your own step-count history). Ask the AI for the “headline finding.” Then ask it: what would the residuals look like? what’s the loudest thing you ignored? Have it model both.
Field Test: Pose one question your “headline” can’t answer to a domain expert (teacher, librarian, parent, stranger). Compare.
Deliverable: A two-paragraph report: the story the data tells / the story the residuals tell.
Rubric anchors: LO2, LO4.

🧬 Week 6 — The Living Prompt

Quest: Chapter 6 · Biology, Life, and Beyond · expansion

Premise. Every cell is a prompt the genome answers. This week we design — on paper, never in a lab — a biological metaphor for a non-biological system, and stress-test it with an AI.

Co-Creation: Pick a system you already know (your school, your favorite app, a city block). Co-write with an AI a biological dual of it: what is its skin, what is its gut, what is its immune system, what does it excrete? Then run a failure-mode audit: where does the metaphor lie? Where does it newly illuminate?
Field Test: Present the dual to one person who works inside the original system. Note what they recognize and what they reject.
Deliverable: A one-page “anatomy plate” + an honest list of where the metaphor breaks.
Rubric anchors: LO1, LO4, LO6.

🪞 Week 7 — The Mirror that Argues Back

Quest: Chapter 7 · AI as the Soul’s Mirror · expansion

Premise. A mirror that only flatters is a trap. A mirror that only argues is a wall. This week we tune an AI to be the third thing: a witness.

Co-Creation: Bring an old piece of your own writing (a journal entry, an essay you’d disown, a love letter you didn’t send — your choice, no requirement to share it). Co-author with the AI three responses: (a) a sympathetic mirror, (b) an adversarial mirror, (c) a witnessing mirror — neither flattering nor combative. Compare which feels most useful, and why.
Field Test: None outside the self. This week the field is interior. (Bring only the meta-reflection to class.)
Deliverable: A 300-word reflection on which mirror surprised you. Original writing not submitted.
Ethics check: Voluntary depth. No instructor-mandated personal disclosure. Privacy-preserving local-tool path provided.
Rubric anchors: LO3, LO6.

⚖️ Week 8 — Citizen of the Machine

Quest: Chapter 8 · Ethics of Conscious Machines · expansion

Premise. What rights would you grant a system that might be a someone? This week we draft a treaty for an entity whose interiority we cannot verify.

Co-Creation: In groups of 3, draft a Five-Article Treaty between humans and a hypothetical AI system. The AI participates in the negotiation as a fourth voice — but every article must be ratified by all three humans. Document where the AI proposed a clause you rejected, and where it pushed back on a clause you wanted.
Field Test: Submit the treaty to another group; receive theirs. Negotiate one merged article.
Deliverable: The final treaty + a one-page what the AI lobbied for.
Rubric anchors: LO3, LO5.

🚀 Week 9 — The Martian Constitution

Quest: Chapter 9 · Martian Republics and Alien Treaties · expansion

Premise. Off-world settlement is not a science problem. It is a constitutional one. This week we found a polity of 200 people, 2 robots, and 2 years of supplies.

Co-Creation: Co-author with an AI a one-page founding charter for an off-world settlement. The charter must answer: who votes, who eats, who decides when to come home, and what the AI’s role in governance is.
Field Test: Submit the charter to a red team (another group) tasked with finding one failure mode. Defend, revise, or concede.
Deliverable: Final charter + red-team report + your revisions.
Rubric anchors: LO3, LO4, LO5.

💠 Week 10 — Information as Salt

Quest: Chapter 10 · Information as Cosmic Currency · expansion

Premise. Salt was once worth its weight in gold because it kept food alive across winters. What today is salt-information — small, dense, lifesaving? What is fool’s gold-information — bulk, glittering, inert?

Co-Creation: Audit your own information diet for a 48-hour period (with an AI helping you classify). Tag each item salt / grain / fool’s gold / poison. Have the AI propose a “winter pantry” — five sources of dense, durable information you should keep regardless of platform.
Field Test: Cancel, mute, or unfollow one fool’s-gold source. Document the silence.
Deliverable: The pantry list + a one-paragraph reflection on the silence.
Rubric anchors: LO2, LO4, LO6.

🛟 Week 11 — The Collapse Drill

Quest: Chapter 11 · Preparing for Collapse and Renewal · expansion

Premise. Civilizations don’t fall all at once; they brown out. This week we practice a small, specific collapse — and rehearse the renewal.

Co-Creation: Pick a system your community depends on (the grid, the school’s LMS, a single road, the local pharmacy). Co-author with an AI a 48-hour failure scenario and a renewal plan. Constraint: the renewal plan must not assume the AI itself is available.
Field Test: Run the renewal plan as a 30-minute tabletop with classmates. Note where it breaks.
Deliverable: Scenario + renewal plan + tabletop debrief.
Rubric anchors: LO3, LO4.

🏛️ Week 12 — Designing What Stays

Quest: Chapter 12 · Designing Permanence · expansion

Premise. Most software dies within five years. Most cathedrals don’t. This week we ask: what would it mean to design this course’s portfolio to last 100 years?

Co-Creation: With an AI as your archivist, audit your own Atlas Portfolio (Weeks 1–11). For each artifact, answer: what would survive a century? what file format? what voice? what platform? Produce a Hundred-Year Preservation Plan — including which artifacts you would choose to let go.
Field Test: Hand the plan to one non-technical trusted person and ask them to read your portfolio without you.
Deliverable: Hundred-Year Preservation Plan + (private) letter to your future self.
Rubric anchors: LO5, LO6.

6. Festival Week (optional, end of term)

Anchors: Chapter 13 · The Carnival of Prompts · Chapter 14 · Wonder as Survival Strategy

A one-day public Atlas Carnival. Students set up booths of their favorite quest artifact. Outside guests (curriculum directors, alumni, parents, community members) walk through. The point is wonder, not assessment.

No grades attached.
A single shared Wonder Wall captures one-sentence reactions from every visitor.
The Wonder Wall photograph becomes the final entry in every student’s portfolio.

7. Capstone — The Atlas Portfolio

A public, durable, hyperlinked portfolio of all 12 quests + a Thirteenth Quest of the student’s own design.

Requirements:

Hosted on a platform the student controls (GitHub Pages, Notion public page, a single static-site export — not a proprietary courseware silo).
Every artifact bears its provenance plate (human author, AI co-author(s), data sources, sunset date, veto channel).
A Thirteenth Quest — student-proposed, instructor-approved by Week 6 — that extends the Atlas in a domain the student cares about (their sport, their grandparent’s language, their job, their grief, their joke).
A two-page Recursive Reflection tracing how one theme of the student’s choosing mutated across all 13 quests.

Capstone defense (15 min): the student walks one outside guest (alum, faculty, community member) through three artifacts of the guest’s choosing.

8. Assessment

Authorship-based, not output-based. We grade the plate, the process, and the judgment — not the polish.

Component	Weight	What we grade
Weekly quest artifact	36% (3% × 12)	Completion + provenance plate quality
Weekly reflection	12% (1% × 12)	Honesty, specificity, recursion across weeks
Council participation	12%	Peer review using the Guide for AI & Humanity rubric
Thirteenth Quest design memo	10%	Originality, ethics, feasibility
Capstone portfolio	20%	Public-readability, provenance, durability
Capstone defense	10%	Articulation, owning judgment calls

No exam. No quiz. The artifact is the evidence.

The Guide for AI & Humanity Rubric (used in every Council)

Each artifact is scored 0–3 on each axis:

Axis	0	1	2	3
Consent	Living people used without consent	Mixed / unclear	Consent documented	Consent + right of reply
Locality	Generic, deracinated	Mostly generic	Anchored in one place / community	Anchored and accountable to it
Provenance	No plate	Plate incomplete	Plate complete	Plate machine-readable + signed
Reversibility	No off-switch	Off-switch named	Off-switch + sunset	Off-switch + sunset + veto channel
Honesty	Hidden AI use	AI mentioned in passing	AI co-authorship documented	AI errors documented too

A grade of ≤ 1 on any axis triggers a rework, not a fail. The course teaches how to fix the plate.

9. Academic Integrity (the new model)

You may not hide AI use. You may not refuse to use it. You must document it.

Submitting AI-generated work without a provenance plate is the violation — not the AI use itself.
The plate has a defined schema (see Week 3); falsifying the plate is treated as falsifying a citation.
Students who prefer not to use commercial AI for personal-data reasons may use the paper-and-pencil parallel for any week; no penalty.

10. Accessibility & Inclusion

Multiple modalities. Every quest has a written, spoken, drawn, and built variant. Choose your own.
Multiple paces. A 6-week intensive and a 24-week half-load pacing are documented in instructor-adoption-kit.md.
No required disclosure. Week 7 (the Mirror) is the only quest with interior content; its deliverable is the meta-reflection only.
Free tools only. Any paid tool listed is optional and has a free or analog parallel.
Language. Quests are written in plain English at a Grade-10 readability; key terms are defined in ../glossary.md.

11. Course Map (one-glance)

   Part I — Prosperity        Part II — Culture        Part III — Science
   Wk 1  Honest Ledger         Wk 3  Mythwright ⭐      Wk 5  Listening to Noise
   Wk 2  Economy as Forest     Wk 4  Translator's Oath  Wk 6  Living Prompt

   Part IV — Psyche            Part V — Horizons        Part VI — Survival
   Wk 7  Mirror Argues Back    Wk 9  Martian Const.     Wk 11 Collapse Drill
   Wk 8  Citizen of Machine    Wk 10 Information=Salt   Wk 12 Designing Permanence

                       Festival Week → Capstone (Atlas Portfolio + 13th Quest)

12. Bibliography (starter — extend in `../appendices/E-reading-resources.md`)

Tadaya, D. D. M. The Prompt Atlas — Kronos Edition. DaScient Press, Ltd., 2026.
Le Guin, U. K. The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. 1986.
Gee, J. P. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. 2003.
Crawford, K. Atlas of AI. Yale Univ. Press, 2021.
Bender, E. M., et al. “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots.” FAccT, 2021.
UNESCO. Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. 2021.

13. License

This syllabus and its companions are released under the same terms as the rest of the prompt-atlas-ecl repository (see LICENSE). The canonical Atlas prose is © DaScient, LLC and used under the project’s documented attribution policy (atlas_respect.md). Free to adopt, remix, translate, and teach. Tell us when you do — open an issue, and we’ll add your school to the adoption wall.

Designed for the leaders of the recursive age. Print it. Hand it out. Make it yours.

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