Start Here
What an AI engineer is, the software baseline, thinking in probabilistic systems, and the escalation ladder the whole book follows: prompt, context, retrieval, tools, agent, fine-tune.
- Chapters
- 4
- Hours
- 1
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- 0.0beginner
What an AI engineer is (and isn't)
AI engineer vs ML engineer vs researcher: the API line, the three roles, and exactly what this handbook teaches and skips.
- 0.1beginner
The software baseline
The seven engineering skills this book assumes (Python, HTTP, JSON, async, Git, Docker, Postgres), why each one matters for AI work, and where to refresh it.
- 0.2beginner
Thinking in probabilistic systems
Why the same LLM call returns different answers even at temperature 0, the five failure modes, and why graceful degradation is the default posture.
- 0.3beginner
The escalation ladder
The priority order the whole book runs on: prompt, context, retrieval, tools, agent, fine-tune. Climb the cheapest rung that fixes the failure.