Hello Pico
See the Open Engineering Language Server (OELS) onboarding guide for the local install and editor setup.
While you work through this content, keep the Open Engineering Language Server (OELS) active in VS Code (or any LSP-capable editor). See the OELS onboarding guide linked at the top of this page (also linked from the academy Resources page) for the one-time install and configuration steps.
What OELS validates. OELS only recognizes OE-shaped YAML/JSON: files with a mapping root that declare an apiVersion beginning with open-engineering.io/, a non-empty kind, and a DNS-1123 metadata.name. Ordinary academy metadata.yaml, Quarto/QMD pages and front matter, Kubernetes/Crossplane/runtime manifests, JSON payload samples, and shell scripts are intentionally non-OE — OELS ignores them silently and you should not add synthetic apiVersion/kind headers to force recognition.
Where you see diagnostics. OELS surfaces UnknownProperty, MissingRequiredProperty, IncorrectType, InvalidEnumValue, MalformedIdentifier, UnknownDefinition, and reference-shape hints in the editor Problems panel as you type. These are independent of quarto render: OELS diagnostics do not block rendering, and Quarto errors do not appear in the Problems panel.
The executable check still comes from this exercise. OELS speeds up editing, but the exercise’s own parser, verifier, or verify.sh (for example the pico parse … command shown below) remains the authoritative success check. Run it as usual.
Overview
Hello Pico is the introductory lab of the Open Engineering Academy. You will author one Rule, run the Parser to turn it into an internal representation, and use the Composer to produce a working hello-world-pico.
The lab is intentionally small — 30 to 45 minutes — and is the reference implementation of the shared lab structure documented under templates/lab/ in the source repository (in-repo scaffold, not published as a learner page).
Structure
What you will produce
A single artifact named hello-world-pico — matching the produces entry in the pico course metadata.
Downloads and screenshots
Starter files live under downloads/. Screenshots referenced from the walkthrough live under screenshots/. Both directories are kept even when empty so authors have a consistent place to add assets.
Metadata
Machine-readable descriptor: metadata.yaml. Fields follow the schema documented in the source repository under templates/README.qmd (in-repo scaffold, not published as a learner page).
Constructive realization
This lab is the Realization of the Hello Pico Definition stated in the Pico course. For the concrete Definition → Realization → Element mapping, with the Constraints this lab’s Element must satisfy and the Validations that check them, see Hello Pico as a constructive exemplar.