🛹 The AI Engineer Onramp, Cohort 2 Home Page

👋 Welcome to The AI Engineer Onramp: From Vibe Coding to AI-Assisted Development

This course is designed to help you get set up like a professional AI Engineer so that you're ready to build production LLM applications in 2026.

🗓️ Class Dates

If you'd like, you can access the Zoom classroom directly now.

Class is held from 12:00 to 1:30 PM on Mondays, and will open promptly at 12:00:00 PM ET. You should have received hard calendar invites for each class period, according to the following schedule 👇

• Monday, December 1: 🎧 From Vibes to AI-Assisted Development
• Monday, December 8: ⚡ LLM APIs & Backend Web App Development & Deployment
• Monday, December 15: 🖼️ Connecting Frontend UIs to Backend Deployments
• Monday, December 22: ↔️ Building Complex End-to-End LLM Applications

🛣️ Getting Started

1. 📅 Calendar: Add the Cohort Calendar to yours here.
2. 🌏 Discord: Join the AIM Discord here. *Send your Discord username to **courseops@aimakerspace.io with the subject line "AIEO2 Discord Access" ***. Then ensure you have access to AIEO2-specific, private Discord Channels described below (described below!).
3. ⚠️ Prerequisites: Read through each of the README.md files in this Repo!

🔍 Setup Checker

Verify your development environment is ready:

Note: run the below commands from the root of the repo.

One off command:

chmod +x scripts/setup-checker.sh

To check the setup each time:

./scripts/setup-checker.sh

This checks your shell, OS tools, Git, Python, IDEs, and API keys. Follow the output instructions to fix any ❌ red X marks, then re-run to verify.

See README.md docs

🧑‍🎓 Course Materials

00_Quicklinks is your one-stop shop for all course materials, and our syllabus and detailed schedule will guide us through the course.

In addition to the optional README overviews of topics in the main repository, for each session you can find everything you need directly in the GitHub README.md for that session. This includes:

• 📛 Required Tooling & Account Setup
• 🧑‍💻 Recommended Pre-Work!
• ⏺️ Recordings
• 🖼️ Slide Decks
• ⌨️ Assignment Code
• 📜 Assignment Submission Forms

🧰 Tooling

The stack we'll use is made up of best-practice tools:

• 🐙 Version Control: GitHub
• 🐚 CLI: Shell for Unix-like OS (WSL)
• 📦 Package & Env Management: uv
• 📓 Python Notebooks: Jupyter / Colab
• 🖱️ Code Editor: Cursor
• 🤖 CLI Coding Agent: Cursor CLI
• 🧠 LLM: OpenAI GPT models
  • Security: Store API keys in a .env file (already in .gitignore)
• 🎨 User Interface: Vibe-coded with v0
• ⚡ Web App Framework: FastAPI
• ☁️ Deployment: Vercel & Render

🌐 Discord

When it comes to Discord, there is a lot to explore. However, if you're trying to get down to brass tax for the course, focus on these aspects:

• Introductions (public - drop yours!)
• build-ship-share-🏗-🚢-🚀 (for when you've built and shipped and are ready to share)

#️⃣ AIEO2 Channels

• aieo2-announcements (for instructor and peer support announcements)
• aieo2-general (treat as cohort misc!)
• aieo2-questions (use this channel to get your questions answered!)
• aieo2-lounge (You can hang out with instructors, peer supporters, and other students!)
• aieo2-office-hours (Join for office hours schedule is on the Cohort calendar)

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Peer Supporters

Your peer supporters will be your guides throughout the cohort! Learn more about each peer supporter below!

• Laura Funderburk, Agentic Alliance, available 2:30 PM ET on Thursdays
• Mani Sarkar, The Sandbox, available at 6 PM ET on Thursdays
• Mike Dean, GitMasters, available at 12 PM ET on Tuesdays
• Don Branson, Distilled Reasoning, available {TBD}
• Todd Deshane, TBD, available at 9 PM ET on Sundays\

🎉 You'll also notice office hours from instructors, peer supporters, and more!

Add the AIM calendar to your Google Calendar to stay on top of all Office Hour events!

🙏 On GitHub Contributions

This GitHub repository is your gateway to going beyond vibe coding and developing your own unique art of AI-assisted development.

We believe in the power of collaboration. Contributions, ideas, and feedback are highly encouraged! Let's build the ultimate resource for getting on the path to AI Engineering together.

Please open up a PR or reach out with any questions or suggestions.

Now let's get building 🏗️, shipping 🚢, and sharing 🚀!