Tasks, checks and hints

Every Klastro scenario is a list of tasks. Klastro does not grade your commands or your typing: it inspects the live state of your environment — whether the Deployment exists, whether the Pod is running, whether the file has the right content — and compares it with what the task asks for. This page explains how that works and how it differs between tutorials, challenges and assessments.

How a check works

When a task is checked, Klastro looks at your environment at that moment and runs the task’s checks against it. A task usually has several checks; it passes when all of its required checks pass.

• Passed means your environment, right now, is in the state the task describes. How you got there does not matter.
• Failed means at least one check did not match. It is not an error: fix the environment and the task can pass on the next check.

Checking takes a few seconds, sometimes longer on a busy or large environment. If Klastro cannot reach part of your environment while checking, it keeps trying by itself rather than failing the task.

Tip

Because Klastro grades the end state, a correct result reached by a different route than the instructions suggest still passes. Undoing your own work before a check, on the other hand, makes it fail.

Tutorials, challenges and assessments

The same scenario format is used everywhere, but each kind of lab checks your work at a different moment.

	Tutorial	Challenge	Assessment
Task list called	Steps	Tasks	Tasks
When work is checked	Whenever you click Check this step	When you click Finish & submit on the last task	Automatically, when the assessment ends
Feedback while working	Yes, per step	No	No
Hints	Guided steps, free	Hints, cost points	Hints, cost points (cost hidden)
Points shown to you	No	Yes	No

A playground has no tasks, checks or hints.

Move between tasks

Click any task in the list to open it, or use Previous and Next at the bottom of the pane. You can work on tasks in any order. The header shows how many are done, for example 3 of 8, and a thin bar under it fills as you progress.

To give the instructions more width, click the list toggle in the header (Hide tasks or Hide steps). The list shrinks to its numbers and stays usable.

Check a tutorial step

1. Do what the step asks, in the terminal, the editor or an app view.

2. Click Check this step, under the step’s instructions. The verdict reads Checking… while Klastro inspects your environment.

3. Read the verdict:

   • Step complete: the step passed. Its number in the list becomes a tick and the progress count goes up.
   • Not yet — try again: at least one check failed. A short note under the verdict lists what did not match yet.

4. If the step failed, fix your environment and click Check again.

5. On the last step, click Finish. A Tutorial complete. Nice work. message appears.

Checks are limited per step

Each step allows a limited number of checks — three, unless the scenario’s author set a different number. Once you have used them all, further checks of that step fail. Read the feedback and fix the environment before you check again, and do not re-check a step that has already passed.

After Finish:

• If you started the tutorial from a certification path, the step is marked complete on the path, the lab is ended, and you return to the path.
• Otherwise you return to the tutorial catalog and the lab keeps running. Pause or end it from My Sessions so it does not use credits needlessly. See Manage your sessions.

Submit a challenge

A challenge has no per-task check button: you submit everything at once, and each submission counts as one attempt per task, so its answers cannot be found by trial and error.

1. Work through the tasks. Each task shows its points, and the header shows the scenario total.

2. On the last task, click Finish & submit.

3. In Finish and submit for grading?, click Submit & see results, or Keep working to go back.

4. Klastro checks every task against your environment and opens the results page, where each task moves from Grading… to Passed or Not passed.

Your lab keeps running after you submit, so you can go back, fix a task and submit again. Your latest submission is the one that counts.

Each submission uses one check per task

Submitting checks every task once. The per-task limit (three by default) applies: after the limit, every task in a new submission is counted as failed and your score drops. Submit when you are confident, not to see how you are doing.

See Your results and history for the results page.

Hints

Hints sit under a task’s instructions. How they behave depends on the lab.

Tutorial

The section is called Guided steps and each entry is a Step. Click Show to read it. Guided steps are free: they never affect anything. Show them in order, from the first.

Challenge

The section is called Hints and they form a chain: only the next hint can be opened, and the others read Reveal hint 2 first and so on. Click Reveal to open one. The button shows what it costs, for example (−5 pts).

Assessment

Hints work as in a challenge — a chain, each with a cost — but the cost is not shown to you. Revealing a hint still reduces your score for that task.

Revealed hints are recorded: they stay open after a reload or on another device, and a revealed hint cannot be hidden again.

Scoring

Scoring applies to challenges and assessments; a tutorial is not scored.

• Each task is worth the points shown next to it. The scenario’s author decides how they are split.
• A task’s points are earned check by check: each check that passes adds its share, so a task that does not fully pass can still earn some points.
• The cost of every hint you revealed for a task is subtracted from that task’s points. A task never goes below zero, so hints on one task cannot cost you points earned on another.
• Your score is the sum over all tasks, using the latest check of each task.

In an assessment, the recruiter sees your score and per-task results in your report. You do not see points during the assessment.

Related

• Take an assessment
• Your results and history
• Checks troubleshooting