Tendril
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Creators · Ages 14–17
The full LLM pipeline, agentic AI with OpenClaw + Ollama, subscription-tier literacy, and a real capstone.
Meet your guide: Atlas — a minimal octahedron
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Chapters
Modules · 140
Data is the strategic asset of AI. Understand the supply chain, the legal fight, and the philosophical stakes before you build anything on top.
Dive into the equations that governed the last five years of AI progress, and the fresh questions they raise now that pure scaling is hitting walls.
Writing software on top of an LLM is not like writing software on top of a database. Treat it as a stochastic system or it will bite you.
Use an AI to write, optimize, and debug your prompts. Meta-prompting is how top teams ship production prompts faster than humans alone could write them.
Before shipping, attack your own prompts. Inject, confuse, overload, and role-swap. If you don't find the holes, your users will.
You can't improve what you don't measure. Build an eval set, pick metrics, and turn prompt engineering from gut-feel into a rigorous discipline.
The EU AI Act is the most sweeping AI law in the world. It will set the compliance floor for anyone who ships globally. Here is the architecture, the timeline, and what it gets right and wrong.
Red-teamers get paid to make AI misbehave. The field has grown into a real discipline — with its own methods, its own ethics, and its own unresolved questions.
If you ship AI, ethics is not abstract. It is a set of decisions you make with real trade-offs. Here is the working checklist serious builders actually use.
The AI coding tool market fragmented fast. Let's map the 2026 landscape honestly: who is for autocomplete, who is for agents, who wins on cost, and what the tradeoffs actually feel like.
Claude Code is Anthropic's terminal-native coding agent. Let's install it, wire it to a project, and use the features most engineers miss on day one.
Codex CLI is OpenAI's terminal coding agent. It runs locally, supports MCP, and ships a codex cloud mode for background tasks. Let's install it and compare it honestly to Claude Code.
Autocomplete is a suggestion. An agent is an actor. The mental model you bring to each is different, and conflating them is the number-one reason teams trip over AI coding.
Model Context Protocol is the USB-C of AI tools. Learn the protocol, wire up a server, and understand why this standard quietly changed the ecosystem.
Frontier models now read a million tokens of your codebase in one shot. That changes how we architect prompts, retrieval, and the cost curve of agentic work.
TDD was already the gold standard. Paired with an agent, it becomes the tightest feedback loop in software. Here's the full workflow and the pitfalls.
Agents ship working code that's also quietly insecure. Red-teaming means actively attacking your own code. Let's build the habits that catch real-world exploits before attackers do.
AI app builders turn a prompt into a running app in minutes. Learn the strengths, the ceilings, and the moment you should eject to a real IDE.
There are real moments where AI coding is slower, worse, or ethically wrong. Naming those moments is as important as naming the hype.
Whiteboarding a LeetCode problem no longer predicts 2026 performance. Here's what coding interviews are becoming, and how to prepare for the new format.
Code review is the highest-leverage touchpoint in a team. Automating the noise with AI frees humans to focus on the irreducibly human parts. Let's design the workflow.
Sub-agents turn Claude Code from a coding assistant into a small engineering team that works in parallel. Let's build a real sub-agent workflow end to end.
AI belongs in CI/CD too. From PR previews to rollback judgment calls, agents can operate inside your pipeline safely — if you scope them right.
AI coding bills surprise teams that don't watch them. Let's break down the real cost drivers, the levers that actually reduce them, and how to set guardrails before your CFO does.
The creators capstone. You scope, design, build, test, deploy, and document a real full-stack project using an agentic workflow — end to end.
The agent market matured fast. Here's the field map — frontier labs, frameworks, browsers, local stacks, benchmarks — so you can pick the right tool without shopping by hype.
Underneath every agent framework is the same primitive — the model returns a structured tool call, you execute it, you feed the result back. Master this loop and every framework looks familiar.
Model Context Protocol is the most important open standard in agents. One protocol, 1,200+ servers, and your agent can plug into almost any system. Here's how it actually works.
One smart agent is fine. Two agents checking each other's work is better. Master the canonical orchestration patterns: planner/executor, judge/worker, debate, and swarm.
LangGraph became the production favorite in 2026 for good reasons — explicit state, checkpointing, first-class MCP. Build a real agent end-to-end and learn why.
Claude Code isn't just a coding assistant — it's a general agent runtime with MCP, subagents, hooks, and skills. Treat it that way and you get a free, powerful platform.
Computer Use lets Claude see your screen and use it — mouse, keyboard, apps. The capability is real, the gotchas are real. A hands-on look at what works in 2026.
Browser agents — Operator, Atlas, Browser Use, MultiOn — are the most visible agent category. The capability is genuine, the failure modes are specific. Build with eyes open.
Numbers on leaderboards are seductive and often wrong. Learn the big benchmarks, their leaderboard positions, their recently-exposed cheats, and how to run your own evals.
A prototype agent and a production agent have the same LLM. What's different is everything around it — durable state, retries, idempotency, observability. The real engineering.
An agent is a new attack surface. Prompt injection, privilege escalation, data exfiltration — these are no longer theoretical. Learn the attacks and the defenses.
Everything comes together. Design, code, test, secure, and ship a production-quality agent with open-source code you can fork today.
Behind the glossy UIs, video models expose REST APIs. Here's how to call Sora, Veo, and Runway programmatically and build production pipelines.
Who owns it? Who can you sue? Who indemnifies you? The commercial licensing landscape is fragmented, evolving, and critical to ship-safe work.
Plan, build, and launch a real creative product using the full AI stack. This is the final deliverable of the Creative track.
Claude Pro vs Max. ChatGPT Plus vs Pro. Gemini AI Pro vs Ultra. Stop guessing which plan you need. Here's the full map.
Subscription spend on AI can silently hit $100/mo. Learn the usage signals that mean upgrade, and the vibes that just mean temptation.
Going beyond the chat window. When you'd reach for the API, how pricing actually works, and how to start building. The API is where AI becomes a building block The consumer app is the most polished version of an AI experience.
Assemble the four or five AI tools that actually belong in your daily life. A tested template for the stack that earns its keep.
Claude Projects, ChatGPT Projects, Notion AI, Perplexity Spaces. How persistent context changes AI from search box to actual assistant.
Every major AI product has a privacy page you've never visited. Here's what to click, toggle, and delete to keep your data yours.
Brand loyalty is a liability in AI. Learn the muscle memory of switching models, the signals that say 'time to swap,' and the anti-lock-in habits.
Perplexity Comet is a full web browser that treats AI as a first-class citizen. It reads, summarizes, and acts on pages you visit.
Skills let you package a prompt, tools, files, and configuration into a named capability Claude can invoke on demand.
ChatGPT's agent mode can browse, click, file taxes, book meetings, write code across multiple apps.
Cursor Agent is the editor equivalent of Claude Code — give it a goal, it reads, writes, tests, and commits across files.
Sora 2 moved from consumer-only to API in 2026. 60-second 1080p video from a prompt, callable from code.
Opus 4.7 shipped in April 2026 with a bigger thinking budget and a 1M-token window at standard prices. Here is the architecture, the pricing math, and when the premium is actually worth it.
Black Forest Labs offers three Flux tiers. Schnell is free-speed, Pro is the paid flagship. Here is when each wins.
SDXL Turbo renders in a single step. That unlocks interactive, typing-to-image experiences you cannot build on slower models.
ElevenLabs v3 clones a voice from seconds of audio. Here is what to build, what to avoid, and how to stay on the right side of consent.
Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot write 40-60% of your keystrokes. The job is not gone — it mutated into reading, directing, and reviewing more code than ever.
Fine-tune, evaluate, serve, monitor. The ML engineer is the person who ships the models that now power medicine, law, and design. It is the highest-leverage engineering role.
NVIDIA GR00T, Physical Intelligence π0, and Figure Helix took the vision-language-action paradigm from research paper to factory floor. This is the hottest hardware-software frontier.
McKinsey Lilli, Gamma, and Claude generate first-draft slides and research in minutes. The real consulting work — client relationships and implementation — is more human than ever.
v0, Linear AI, and Dovetail synthesize research, draft PRDs, and ship prototypes in hours. The PM role has leveled up from communicator to quasi-builder.
Traffic, zoning, and equity impacts now model in an afternoon. The planner's job is choosing which tradeoffs a community can live with.
Retinal imaging with AI now screens for diabetes, hypertension, Alzheimer's markers, and more. The OD owns the interpretation and the patient relationship.
Space planning, mood, and 3D viz have collapsed to hours. The designer still has to know what a room should feel like. What AI touches Concept renderings — text-to-image from existing room photos.
Cursor forked VS Code and rebuilt it around AI. It's now the de facto AI IDE for serious engineers. Deep dive on what makes it different, the Composer agent, and the $500/month enterprise pricing.
Windsurf (from Codeium, acquired by OpenAI in 2025) competes with Cursor via Cascade, its autonomous agent. Deep look at where it's ahead, where it's behind, and the post-acquisition future.
Claude Code runs in your terminal, operates on your actual file system, and treats your whole repo as context. Deep look at why senior engineers prefer it to IDE-based AI.
Codex CLI is OpenAI's open-source terminal coding agent. Look at how it compares to Claude Code, what it does uniquely, and why it matters to non-Anthropic shops.
Zed is a Rust-native code editor that integrates AI collaboration and pair-coding at the architecture level. Look at its strengths as a lightweight Cursor alternative.
Figma's AI features (First Draft, Make Designs, Rename Layers) bring generative design to the industry standard. Deep dive on what it's changed and what's still a gimmick.
Framer's AI turns a prompt into a publishable website with real code. Look at who's using it to ship portfolios and small-biz sites in 2026.
Recraft focuses on style consistency, vector output, and brand workflows — things Midjourney still ignores. Deep dive on why designers and marketers are switching.
Galileo AI (now part of Google) generates high-fidelity UI mockups from prompts. Look at the acquisition, what happened to the product, and current Google Stitch equivalence.
Uizard turns hand-drawn sketches, screenshots, and prompts into editable UI mockups. Look at whether its 2026 AI upgrades make it a real Figma alternative.
Runway Gen-4 generates cinematic AI video from prompts. Deep look at its industrial-strength features, why studios use it, and the ethical firestorm around it.
ElevenLabs generates synthetic voices indistinguishable from human recordings. Deep dive on voice cloning, dubbing, the consent-and-ethics story, and pricing realities.
Suno generates full songs — vocals, instruments, lyrics — from a text prompt. Deep dive on what it sounds like, the industry lawsuits, and whether it's a toy or a tool.
Descript revolutionized podcast editing by making audio editable as text. Deep dive on Overdub voice cloning, Studio Sound, and the serious 2025 updates. Studio Sound — one-click AI noise reduction that makes laptop recordings sound studio-quality.
Pika Labs built a viral AI video product aimed at creators, not studios. Compare it to Runway and look at where it fits in 2026.
Writer is a full-stack enterprise AI platform with its own models (Palmyra), strict governance, and deep integrations. Look at who chooses it over ChatGPT Enterprise.
Sudowrite is purpose-built for fiction writers. Deep dive on its Story Bible, Brainstorm, Describe, and Expand tools — and why novelists pay $25/month when ChatGPT is cheaper.
ShortlyAI was one of the first GPT-3 writing apps, now owned by Jasper. Look at whether the stripped-down approach still makes sense in 2026.
Zapier built the integration platform that connects 7,000+ apps. Zapier Agents and Zapier Central are its attempt to add AI agents on top. Deep look at where it works and where it breaks.
Motion schedules your tasks into your calendar automatically, rescheduling as priorities change. Look at whether it actually improves productivity or just feels busy.
Reclaim schedules tasks and protects habits on your calendar, but with a gentler touch than Motion. Look at why some users prefer it.
Superhuman was famous for fast email before AI. Now it bundles AI replies, auto-drafting, and AI calendar. Deep look at whether it's worth the premium.
ClickUp is project management, docs, goals, and chat all in one. ClickUp AI is its answer to Notion AI. Look at what it does inside the ClickUp ecosystem.
Consensus searches 200M+ academic papers and gives evidence-based answers. Deep look at how researchers use it, what it does differently from Perplexity, and its limits.
Elicit automates slow parts of academic research: finding papers, extracting data, building literature matrices. Look at what it saves PhDs 20 hours a week.
Gong records, transcribes, and analyzes every sales call to surface what works. Deep dive on what Gong actually does, the 'deal intelligence' features, and why it's $1,500+/seat/year.
Clay scrapes, enriches, and personalizes at scale for sales and marketing. Deep look at what it does, the Claygent agent, and pricing that starts at $149/month.
Lindy builds AI agents that do jobs: handle email, qualify leads, schedule meetings. Deep dive on what it actually delivers vs the marketing.
Vic.ai autonomously processes invoices, codes transactions, and speeds up AP teams. Deep look at what CFOs are buying and where it fails.
Harvey is the AI legal platform deployed at top law firms worldwide. Deep dive on what it does, why firms pay six-figures for seats, and the 2026 competitive landscape.
Classes let you bundle data with the behavior that operates on it. You'll build a class for a real thing and use AI to refactor it with confidence.
Async lets your program make 100 API calls at once instead of one at a time. Essential for LLM apps. You'll write the two patterns that solve 90% of cases.
Scrape a site with httpx and BeautifulSoup, then hand messy text to Claude for structured extraction. A full project in 60 minutes.
An agent is a loop: model decides, tool runs, model reads result, decides again. You'll build one in 100 lines without a framework.
Pull data from an API, clean it with pandas, ask Claude to enrich each row, save to SQLite. The pattern powers most data-engineering AI work.
Classes group state and behavior. Dataclasses cut boilerplate. Let AI scaffold while you understand what's under the hood.
async/await lets one program wait on many things at once. Perfect for HTTP calls and LLM APIs. Let AI help you avoid the common traps.
type vs interface, optional fields, and structural typing. Model your data once and let every function benefit.
Generics let a function work for many types while keeping type safety. The syntax looks scary and the concept is simple.
The App Router uses React Server Components by default. Learn the folder conventions and the server/client split.
RSCs render on the server and stream HTML to the client. Zero-JS components, free data fetching. Learn the boundary rules.
Utility classes and copy-paste components. The combo most AI tools produce best code for.
FastAPI is Python's modern web framework. Type hints become schema. Docs auto-generate. Ship an API in 20 lines.
Store embeddings, search by similarity. The foundation of every RAG system. Postgres plus pgvector gets you there.
Prisma gives TypeScript a type-safe database client generated from your schema. Model once, get autocomplete everywhere.
Clerk handles sign-up, sign-in, sessions, and accounts so you don't. Drop it into Next.js and move on.
Anthropic's SDK in 20 lines. Learn messages, streaming tokens, and basic error handling.
The Responses API is OpenAI's modern surface. One call, text and tools. Learn the shape you'll use most.
Force an LLM to return JSON that matches a schema. Zod + tool-use or JSON mode makes this reliable.
Model Context Protocol lets agents plug into your tools. A 40-line server exposes a real capability to Claude.
Chunk, embed, store, retrieve, generate. Build retrieval-augmented generation in a single file.
The model calls a function you defined, you run it, you return the result. Learn the loop and the common pitfalls.
Streaming AI chat to production takes one framework and three env vars. Learn the deploy path that actually ships.
Tie it all together. A command-line tool that reads a file, calls Claude, and prints a summary. Real code, real errors, real polish.
Sparse autoencoders, features, circuits. How researchers try to see what a model actually thinks, and why it may be the most strategically important safety work.
What must a lab tell the public or regulators about a model before shipping it? The answer used to be 'nothing.' It is becoming more.
The UK stood up the world's first government AI safety institute in November 2023. Its structure, scope, and access model are templates other nations are following.
While larger countries debate, Singapore shipped a practical tool. AI Verify is a testing framework and toolkit that lets companies self-assess against international principles.
Could AI help someone build a bioweapon? It's a serious question with a boring, important answer. Here is what the evidence shows without the scare quotes.
The world's most influential 'leaderboard' for AI is not a test — it is humans voting blindly. Here is how that works.
When the test questions quietly end up in the training data, scores lie. Here is how it happens and how to catch it.
Evaluating models that see, hear, and read at once requires new kinds of tests. Here are the ones that matter.
The eval that matters most is the one tied to your real task. Here is a step-by-step way to build one. The rubric is the product Most 'AI product' failures are actually rubric failures.
Prompts are code. Code needs tests. Here is how to stop silently breaking your system each time you tweak a prompt.
Benchmarks measure what you ask. Red-teaming measures what breaks. Learn to test for failure modes, not capabilities. For AI, red teams probe for harmful outputs, jailbreaks, bias, leakage of training data, and dangerous capabilities.
NotebookLM turns a pile of PDFs into a searchable, askable brain. Here is how to build a research notebook that keeps paying dividends.
The norms for disclosing AI use in research are still being written. Here is the emerging consensus and how to stay on the right side of it.
Behind every supervised model is an army of human labelers. Understanding how labeling works is understanding who really builds AI.
Even accurate data can encode an unjust history. The COMPAS recidivism tool shows what happens when AI learns from a biased past.
Small populations get hurt first when datasets are built carelessly. Fixing this requires intentional collection, not just better algorithms.
Ownership of data is not one question but a tangle of rights: copyright, contract, privacy, and control. Untangling them is essential for responsible use.
If you build a dataset, how you license it determines who can use it and how. Picking the right license matters as much as the data itself.
Jupyter is the data scientist's notebook. Code, output, and narrative in one document. Learning Jupyter well pays dividends for every future project.
Creating a dataset from scratch teaches you more than using someone else's. Here is how to build a high-quality small labeled dataset for a real task.
Neural networks mix many concepts into each neuron. Sparse autoencoders pull them apart into human-readable features. This is the workhorse of modern interpretability.
AI writes Java for you faster than your teacher can say 'Scanner'. Using it without cheating yourself out of the class is the real skill.