CS486/686 Winter 2026 - Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

There will be 10 chat assignments with Chrysalis, each worth 1% of the final grade. In each chat assignment you must teach Chrysalis what you learned in the course by answering a set of questions. You will answer those questions in a chat interface where Chrysalis will prompt you and possibly ask you for clarifications. The grading for chat assignments is based on participation. You will get full marks for each question that you answer. No mark will be deducted for incorrect answers. Instead marks will be deducted for not answering questions or not trying to answer questions sufficiently.

To get started with the chat assignments, sign up with Chrysalis as follows:

1. For data security reasons, we are hosting Chrysalis on university machines. The URL is https://andromeda-208.cs.uwaterloo.ca; please bookmark this site as you will be using it all term.
2. Create an account by signing up with your @uwaterloo.ca email.
   • Important: You must use your WatIAM@uwaterloo.ca email to sign up; if you have a friendly email, for instance firstname.lastname@uwaterloo.ca, do not use this, as we will not be able to link your usage with your Quest ID.
3. Verify your email: once you sign up, you will receive a verification request at the email address you’ve provided. Follow the instructions to activate your account.

Once you sign in, you should be added automatically to the course “CS 486/686”. All your chat assignments will be done in Chrysalis. If you do not see this course on your dashboard, contact us by making a private post on Piazza: Communication

1. We will be using Piazza as the primary means of class-wide communication for anything related to Chrysalis.
2. For individual queries (e.g. questions about chat assignments, issues), please make a private post addressed to Prashanth Arun and Robert Cai (designers of Chrysalis).

The expected out and due dates for each chat assignment are:

• Chat 1: out Jan 15, due Jan 19 (11:59 pm)
• Chat 2: out Jan 22, due Jan 26 (11:59 pm)
• Chat 3: out Jan 29, due Feb 2 (11:59 pm)
• Chat 4: out Feb 5, due Feb 9 (11:59 pm)
• Chat 5: out Feb 12, due Feb 16 (11:59 pm)
• Chat 6: out Feb 26, due March 2 (11:59 pm)
• Chat 7: out March 5, due March 9 (11:59 pm)
• Chat 8: out March 12, due March 16 (11:59 pm)
• Chat 9: out March 19, due March 23 (11:59 pm)
• Chat 10: out March 26, due March 30 (11:59 pm)

Once you have answered all the questions for a chat assignment, there is no "submit" button. You simply leave your chat as it is. Chrysalis automatically saves your chat. After the deadline, your chat will be automatically graded for participation (i.e., 100% for each question answered regardless of correctness as long as you made a genuine attempt to answer the question). The quality of your answers will be indirectly assessed via a quiz that Chrysalis will answer on your behalf. There are no marks for this quiz and you do not have to do anything. This is a self diagnosis piece meant to provide feeback and help you identify concepts that you may want to further study. After the deadline for each chat assignment, you will be able to see the quiz questions and which questions Chrysalis answered correctly/incorrectly based on your teaching in the chat interface.