Certasy X — The Career Sphere Grid

A single-file, gamified career-progression tracker themed after the Final Fantasy X Sphere Grid. Built to make breaking into tech feel like leveling a character — designed around ADHD reward mechanics (immediate, visible point acquisition bound to real, demonstrable skill).

What it is

A self-contained index.html (no build, no dependencies) with two tabs:

• The Grid — a dual-track skill map (Fast-Door / MSP lane and Cloud lane, joined by a Crossover Bridge). It opens with a two-tier shared foundation — networking, CLI, and Git, then the cross-functional skills that pay off in both lanes: security basics, troubleshooting method, SQL/data, and docs & communication. Every node is a real skill or certification. Click a node to open its lesson panel: what you'll learn, curated video/reading/lab resources, a hands-on "Fiend Hunt", and the Activate button. Log study sessions to earn AP, Spheres, and Overdrive; spend Spheres to activate nodes. Progress saves to the browser (localStorage).

• Methodology — the full guide explaining the point economy, the two lanes, the weekly rhythm vs. the campaign, and the ADHD design rationale.

Run it

Just open index.html in any browser. That's it.

The point economy (TL;DR)

Two decoupled currencies — the actual FFX Sphere Grid, not a checklist with a skin. See SPEC.md for the full design.

• Sphere Levels (S.Lv) — a banked, spendable balance. Earning AP converts to S.Lv at the current Pace; spend 1 S.Lv to move the token onto a new node. Banks forever, never decays.
• Pace slider (Crunch · Steady · Deep dive) — how far each bit of effort moves you. Future-only: changing it never rewrites S.Lv you already banked.
• Spheres (activation) — earned by the matching activity, spent on the matching node type: Power (labs) → hands-on nodes, Mana (study) → theory nodes, Fortune (outreach) → job/errand nodes, Ability (practice-exam reps, only at a cert node) → cert checkpoints. You can't advance a hands-on skill by only watching videos.
• Key Spheres — four milestones forged from a pasted proof: Lv.1 First Build (gates certs), Lv.2 Portfolio, Lv.3 First Coin, Lv.4 Track Record.
• Overdrive — fills with consistency (focus sprints); unleash for +3 free Sphere Levels.
• Earned-done, auto-recorded — anti-cheat built for minimum friction. A skill/cert node won't light up on a click: activating it requires one concrete line of evidence (command output, commit URL, practice score, or one real sentence — min 15 chars). Opening a lesson auto-marks it (progress candy, not a gate), and tapping a campaign quest opens the actual node — activating it auto-clears the quest, so there's no bare-click AP faucet to game. Later, Review resurfaces the skill with your own logged evidence and asks you to reproduce it, so a hollow "done" falls apart over time. AP/Spheres still flow freely from encounters — the dopamine loop is intact; only marking a skill mastered costs an artifact.

The portfolio spine

Every lab produces a public, artifact-shaped proof (a repo / gist / PR), and those artifacts stack into one functional system rather than piling up piecemeal — her existing homelab, productionized layer by layer, then mirrored to a cloud free tier with the same Terraform. A ◆ Portfolio tab shows two "Your Stack" trackers (primary Homelab→Cloud spine + a fast-door AD/PowerShell spine) that fill in as each layer's artifact is shipped, plus a Talking Points view that assembles the optional per-layer story hooks into night-before-interview prep. See SPEC.md for the full per-node proof criteria.

Weekly rhythm

Four recurring quests, no calendar dates (the week is the unit, so a slow day never means "falling behind"):

• 🔴 Fiend Hunt — hands-on lab task ×3 → Power
• 🔵 Al Bhed Primer — read/watch a lesson ×2 → Mana
• 🟢 Focus — 25-min focus block ×2 → charges Overdrive
• 🟣 Summon Allies — one brave outward move ×1 → Fortune

Clear all four → The Calm (+100 AP · Overdrive charged).

The campaign & the Fast-Door sidequest

The Campaign is the story spine — nine chapters that walk the homelab → cloud path in strict grid-prerequisite order (foundations → forge the Lv.1 Key → AZ-900 boss → Terraform/CI/CD/ monitoring → associate boss → ship the portfolio → contract → ☆ Freelance, the celestial-weapon endgame). Every quest is a doorway: tapping a "watch this" task opens the actual video (direct links, not searches), tapping a skill task opens that node's lesson panel, and the quest auto-completes the moment you genuinely activate the node (evidence logged) — no bare-click box to game. Chapters open based on real progress, not a calendar; the guided cert path is Azure (Boston's bet), with AWS as a documented one-for-one swap (the cert nodes carry both videos).

Running alongside it is ✦ The Fast Door, an optional sidequest for the "need a paycheck in weeks" situation: Windows/AD → M365 → PowerShell → RMM → A+/Net+ → the MSP/help-desk job (real income), then either the Crossover Bridge — an alternate Lv.2-Lock key that opens the portfolio/contract endgame without the associate cert — or its own Sr. MSP/Generalist endgame. It reuses the Week 1–2 foundations, so it branches off the main spine rather than duplicating it.