Week 1 — Foundations
5 lessons · project on day 6
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Day 1
AI Engineer
What an AI engineer actually does, and how this 30-day path gets you there.
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Day 2
Programming
The fundamentals that survive contact with non-deterministic systems — typed errors, idempotency, and reasoning about failure.
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Day 3
JavaScript
The JavaScript an AI engineer actually needs — async iteration for streaming tokens, AbortController, and backpressure.
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Day 4
Node.js
Streams, edge vs. Node runtimes, and timeouts on long generations — the server-side plumbing that makes AI features reliable.
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Day 5
React
Rendering partial model output, optimistic state, and streaming UI — the React patterns every AI product interface needs.
Day 6 project
Prompt Playground
A single-page playground that sends the same prompt to a model at three different temperatures and renders the outputs side by side, with the full request logged underneath. Building it forces you to hold the whole request/response shape in your head — messages, system prompt, sampling parameters, token usage — instead of treating the model as a text box.
Stack
- TypeScript
- Node.js
- React
- Vercel AI SDK
- localStorage
The hard parts
- Streaming three responses concurrently without the UI blocking or interleaving tokens into the wrong column.
- Keeping the API key server-side — the first instinct is to call the provider from the browser, which leaks the key to anyone who opens devtools.
- Making the comparison fair: same seed-independent prompt, same max tokens, only temperature varying.
Why it belongs in your portfolio
Shows you understand that model output is a function of parameters you control, not luck. The logged request panel is the part reviewers notice — it proves you can debug an LLM call rather than re-roll it.