Every SmithFellow begins with the Core — twenty-four to thirty hours of in-person workforce readiness training delivered over eight to ten sessions in three-hour blocks. A trained facilitator observes each participant across ten behavioral dimensions while an AI tracking framework captures engagement data in real time. The methodology is the foundation. What emerges is the person.

The SmithFellow Core

The facilitator does not assign tasks. The facilitator watches. Ten dimensions are observed across every session:

Ten Behavioral Dimensions

Inquiry Quality — Iteration Behavior — Correction Capacity — Frustration Tolerance — Collaboration Pattern — Self-Advocacy Development — Task Approach Behavior — Interest Signal — Reflective Capacity — SmithTalk Progression. The tenth dimension — SmithTalk Progression — measures something no traditional assessment tool measures: how a human develops a working relationship with AI over sustained hours.

Three checkpoints — Entry after Session 2, Midpoint after Session 5, Exit at completion — produce a longitudinal behavioral profile. The exit deliverable is a Career Direction Profile built on three signal groups:

Builder

Persistence through resistance. Scored high in Iteration Behavior, Task Approach, and Frustration Tolerance. The person who stays at the problem until the problem gives.

Connector

Makes the room work. Scored high in Collaboration Pattern, Self-Advocacy Development, and SmithTalk Progression. The person who amplifies what’s already in the room.

Explorer

Asks the question nobody else asked. Scored high in Inquiry Quality, Interest Signal, Reflective Capacity, and Correction Capacity. The person who finds the door nobody saw.

The participant does not receive a type code. They receive a narrative — a story about who they became in the room, told through what the facilitator and the AI observed together.

Five Elective Modules

When the building opens, five modules extend the Core into specialized domains. Each module is $2,000 and applies the behavioral observation methodology to a specific career pathway:

Fabrication

Uses AI to design, iterate, and solve fabrication problems. Workforce credential for manufacturing and trades contexts. The displaced worker who needs a job in six months is likely on this path.

Research

Structured inquiry, patent landscape analysis, competitive research, feasibility assessment. SmithWorks concepts are the live projects — Research graduates validate real inventions for real inventors under NDA.

Entrepreneurship

Evaluates invention concepts, builds business cases, develops feasibility assessments. SmithWorks is the live laboratory. This module produces founders, not employees.

Facilitation

The natural teacher. Completes the Core and wants to teach others. This is the pipeline that produces CrowdSmith’s next generation of facilitators. The program creates its own workforce.

Systems

The engineering mind that connects digital fabrication to robotics. Uses AI to program, model, and problem-solve for Station Five applications. The deepest technical path.

The program is cohort-based. SmithFellows work across multiple concepts from the portfolio — not just one. Week one you might be doing a patent landscape on a kitchen gadget. Week three, a competitive analysis on an industrial sensor. Week six, a feasibility assessment on a software tool. By the end of the cycle, you don’t just know how to research one invention — you know how to evaluate any concept that walks through the door. That’s business fluency, not narrow specialization.

The evaluation is anonymous. The talent match is emergent — the program surfaces who is good at what, not by testing, but by watching what happens when capable people encounter real problems.

The SmithFellow Core is designed for WIOA alignment, meaning it can be funded through workforce development dollars. The per-seat cost is $2,000 for 24 to 30 contact hours. That’s $67 to $83 per contact hour — competitive with any technical training program in the region. Workforce Pell eligibility begins July 1, 2026.

The complete infrastructure defines every component of the credential — a Facilitator Observation Rubric, a Training Manual, a Session Curriculum Guide, a Participant Intake Form, a Behavioral Profile Template, an AI Tracking Framework, a Facilitator Calibration Protocol, and a Data Collection System. Eight documents. The credential system is architecturally complete.

Cohort One is being assembled.

Built for what’s coming.