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New pillar — AI

You've mastered system design.
Now master the systems that reason.

From your first LLM API call to shipping an agentic platform — with a senior AI architect (OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini caliber) walking beside you. Same mentor voice. Same visual-first depth. Same rigorous citations. New territory.

Start the A1 journeySee the full A1→A5 path

The AI Proficiency Levels

AI is a new practice — orthogonal to seniority. An L6 systems architect may be an A2 in AI. Every entry on this tab is graded against the same 5-level rubric.

A1
API Caller

You can call an LLM API from your app and get useful output.

A2
Prompt Engineer

You can shape LLM output with prompting techniques and structured outputs.

A3
RAG Builder

You can ground LLMs in your own data with retrieval.

A4
Agent Engineer

You can build multi-step agents with tools, memory, and reflection.

A5
AI Architect

You can design, evaluate, and operate AI systems at production scale.

The AI curriculum — 6 content pillars

Mirroring the site's existing structure. Every entry is graded, level-anchored, and cited. Authoring is an active sprint — scaffolded entries show the roadmap. Authored entries link through.

Mentored journeys

12/15

URL Shortener-quality journeys for each AI competency.

Browse

Concept deep-dives

0/42

Every foundational idea with mental model, misconception, and RFC/paper citations.

Browse

Components

0/22

LLM providers, vector DBs, MCP servers, agent frameworks — head-to-head.

Browse

Patterns

0/18

RAG, ReAct, Reflexion, guardrails — the patterns production teams actually ship.

Browse

Real-product deep-dives

0/7

Cursor, Perplexity, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code — how they're actually built.

Browse

Hands-on labs

0/10

Buildable exercises from first chatbot to MCP server + red-team lab.

Browse

Same mentor. New territory.

The mentor here is explicitly framed as a senior AI architect at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini — someone who has quietly built the tools you use every day. Same voice you know from the URL Shortener journey: direct, opinionated, ruthlessly focused on the ONE decision that matters at each fork.

Content authoring is a multi-session sprint. Follow the A1 flagship journey for the reference-quality experience; use the index pages to see the full roadmap.