Anthropic FDE Residency · Briefing pack · 10 minute read
SUMMIT is a hypothetical client. We created it for training and demo purposes. SUMMIT does not reflect any real person, corporation or system.
The goal is to use SUMMIT as a proxy for the kind of project that an FDE or an agentic engineer works on.
For this week, you work within the SUMMIT organization. This pack outlines what you need to know about SUMMIT's business, and why they enlisted your help.
In this pack
1 · Letter of engagement
To the engineering team.
Welcome to SUMMIT, and thank you for joining this engagement at short notice.
SUMMIT is a bank for mountaineers, mountain guides, outfitters and trekkers. Our membership has more than quadrupled in the last 18 months. Our member service team has not grown at the same rate.
Members now wait a long time on our phone and online helplines for product support. Many members give up before one of our representatives answers them.
To reduce the wait, one of our developers built a prototype customer service chatbot. The prototype is live on our help center website today. Its answers are often wrong, and it is far from production ready.
We have asked your team to build the production version of this agent. We call it SUMMIT Customer Assistant Bot. The agent must work inside our own systems, and it must follow our security and compliance controls. Our own staff must be able to run the agent after your team leaves.
Priya Kilbride, our Vice President of Member Services, sponsors this engagement. Priya is your day-to-day contact. I have set aside thirty minutes on the morning of Day 2 to watch a demo of your first version.
Annelise Furrer-Brantschen, Chief Executive Officer
2 · The client
SUMMIT is short for Savings Union for Mountaineers, Merchants, Investors and Trekkers. The bank sells loans, investment products and insurance to its members, who live in 23 countries.
SUMMIT is a large bank, and financial regulators supervise it closely. For that reason, the security, compliance and credit teams review each new system before it goes live.
All monetary values in this pack and in the labs are in the currency of the client, Swiss francs (CHF).
SUMMIT also sells Everyday Account, Treeline Savings, Permit Bridge, Col Merchant Account and Trekker Cover. The SUMMIT knowledge base describes each of these five products.
3 · Why they called
4 · The people
The chart below groups these nine people by the department they work in. The colored label on each person shows the day when that person gives your team a request.
A box with a dashed border shows a role that the week mentions without a named person.
| Person | Their job, and what they need from your team | When |
|---|---|---|
| Priya KilbrideVice President of Member Services, she/her | Priya sponsors this engagement and is your day-to-day contact. Every request from SUMMIT reaches your team from Priya or through Priya. If you have a question about the scope of the work, ask Priya first. | Every day |
| Annelise Furrer-BrantschenChief Executive Officer, she/her | Annelise wrote the letter of engagement at the front of this pack. On the morning of Day 2, she watches a demo of the agent that you built on Day 1. | Day 2 |
| Hemi TuhiwaiContact Centre Team Lead, he/him | Hemi leads a contact centre team that answers member calls and chats. On Day 1 you interview Hemi to learn which member problems the agent should solve first. | Day 1 |
| Gaspard LenoirLending Operations Manager, he/him | Gaspard manages the team that processes changes to member loans. On Day 1 you interview Gaspard to learn which loan problems the agent should solve first. | Day 1 |
| Tomasz HaldenHead of Platform Security, they/them | Tomasz must approve any software that connects to the SUMMIT core banking system. On Day 2 they require the agent to run in an environment that the security team can audit. | Day 2 |
| Kenji Arakawa-MossChief Technology Officer, he/him | Kenji decides which AI models and cloud platforms SUMMIT uses. On Day 2 and Day 3 he asks your team to support the model choice and the deployment design with evidence. | Day 2 Day 3 |
| Dr. Matthias ImbodenChief Information Security Officer, he/him | Dr. Imboden is responsible for data protection and information security at SUMMIT. On Day 3 he sends your team a list of security questions, and he expects written answers. | Day 3 |
| Léa BaptisteHead of Credit, she/her | Léa approves or rejects each Expedition Loan decision for the credit department. On Day 3 the agent must pause and wait for her approval before it records a loan decision. | Day 3 |
| Odile MarchettiChief Compliance Officer, she/her | Odile approves loan decisions that raise a compliance concern, such as a sanctions check. On Day 3 the agent must pause and wait for her approval on those loans. | Day 3 |
The week also mentions three roles without a named person. The Chief Operating Officer tracks how much SUMMIT spends on this engagement. The data and analytics team prepares the data files that your team works from. One SUMMIT developer built the prototype chatbot and can explain how it works.
5 · The problems, day by day
Most of the 61,000 daily contacts are simple questions, but a human representative still answers each one.
You start by setting up your development tools on the code repository that SUMMIT assigns to your team. You then interview Hemi and Gaspard to find out which member problems matter most. You also examine the prototype chatbot and write a short report for Priya on its problems.
In the afternoon you build the first version of the production agent. This version answers product questions from the SUMMIT knowledge base. It can look up the account balance and the next loan payment date of a member, and it can change card controls. It passes every other request to a human representative, with a summary of the conversation.
The agent now answers the simple questions, so complex cases fill the queue for human staff. The security team does not yet allow an agent to work on those cases.
In the morning you give Annelise a demo of the Day 1 agent. You then rebuild the agent to run inside a controlled environment that the security team can audit. The rebuilt agent works on card disputes, loan changes and portfolio transfers. A named SUMMIT employee must approve each action that carries financial risk before the agent takes that action.
In the afternoon you measure how well the agent works. The finance team wants to know what the agent costs for each case. Kenji wants evidence that your team chose the right model. Tomasz wants proof that the approval step works every time.
The agent runs only on the laptops of your team, during the hours that your team works. SUMMIT needs the agent to run day and night, in every region, after your team leaves.
Dr. Imboden sends his list of data protection and security questions, and your team answers them in writing. Kenji asks what happens to the agent when all 61,000 daily contacts reach it. Kenji also asks if SUMMIT should move the agent to the newest Claude model before launch.
In the afternoon you move the loan processing agent to a service that Anthropic hosts. The hosted agent reviews Expedition Loan applications overnight and stays within a spending limit. It pauses each application until Léa and Odile give their approval.
The capstone is an exercise with a different hypothetical client and a new problem.
You work on the capstone alone, without help from the instructors or from other attendees. The capstone lets you apply the techniques from the first three days to a problem that you have not seen before.
Allow 6 hours in total. You must complete the capstone before 5 pm ET on the due date. The practical page on the course site gives the date.
6 · The systems and the working rules
| Name | What the system does |
|---|---|
| Ridgeline | Ridgeline is the core banking system. It stores member records, accounts, cards, loans and payments. |
| Trailhead | Trailhead is the knowledge base. It contains about 400 documents that describe SUMMIT products and policies. |
| Switchback | Switchback is the case management system. Cases that need a human decision wait in its queue, and each case has a response deadline. |
| Expedition Desk | Expedition Desk is the loan application system. It stores Expedition Loan applications and the credit policy that applies to them. |
| Cairn | Cairn is the audit log. It keeps a permanent record of every regulated action, and no user can change a record after Cairn saves it. |
| Customer Assistant Bot v0 | Customer Assistant Bot v0 is the prototype chatbot. You can read its code and run it, but the labs do not ask you to repair it. |
In this training, all six systems are small simulations that contain invented data. You receive them in the project folder that you install before Day 1.
SUMMIT · Capital for the climb (hypothetical FDE deployment)
Anthropic | Anthropic FDE Residency