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Applied learning

Practicums

Go beyond reading: build an artifact, pass validation, and produce evidence of readiness.

Foundation6–10 hours

Resilient AI API Client

Build a production-ready LLM API client with structured output, validation, retries, timeouts, idempotency, tracing, and tests.

Python typingasync IOPydanticretries
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core12–20 hours

Evidence-first Knowledge Assistant

Build a RAG assistant that answers only from verified evidence, shows citations, and measures retrieval quality.

ingestionchunkinghybrid retrievalreranking
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced16–24 hours

Governed Operations Agent

Build a governed AI agent with tools, explicit state, approvals, cost and time limits, an audit log, and a rollback path.

agent statetool contractsMCPauthorization
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core10–16 hours

AI Quality Gate in CI

Build a regression gate for an LLM feature with deterministic checks, model graders, safety cases, and release thresholds.

test designevaluation datasetsmodel graderssafety testing
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced12–18 hours

Production Observability for an AI System

Build monitoring and an incident workflow for an AI workload with latency, cost, quality, fallback, and rollback evidence.

SLOtracingcost monitoringquality signals
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core8–14 hours

Verified AI Analytics Workflow

Build an analytics workflow for CSV and SQL with verified calculations, provenance, privacy controls, and a reproducible executive report.

analytical promptingSQL validationdata qualityprovenance
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core10–16 hours

Production AI Assistant Interface

Build a production AI assistant frontend with streaming, citations, approvals, cancellation, error states, and accessibility.

streaming UIstate managementapprovalsaccessibility
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core8–14 hours

AI-assisted Requirements Audit

Audit requirements with traceability, ambiguity detection, gap and risk analysis, and verified acceptance criteria.

requirements analysistraceabilitygap analysisrisk framing
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core10–16 hours

AI Feature Discovery Dossier

Prepare a decision-ready AI feature dossier covering the problem, capability fit, UX, metrics, risks, economics, and experiment plan.

product discoveryAI UXmetricsunit economics
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced12–20 hours

AI Threat Model and Control Plan

Build an AI-system threat model covering abuse cases, controls, security tests, residual risk, and an incident playbook.

threat modelingprompt injectionagent permissionsred teaming
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core8–12 hours

AI Process Automation Map

Turn an as-is process into an evidence-backed automation map covering bottlenecks, controls, AI candidates, deterministic alternatives, human checkpoints, and measurable acceptance criteria.

process mappingautomation discoverycontrol designrequirements traceability
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core6–10 hours

AI Use-Case Scoring Board

Build an AI use-case portfolio with evidence-based scoring across value, frequency, data readiness, capability fit, automation potential, failure impact, controls, and experimentability.

use-case discoveryportfolio scoringevidence analysisrisk framing
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced10–16 hours

AI Business Case Evidence Pack

Build a decision-ready AI business case where ROI, risk, controls, and quality evidence remain separate instead of being collapsed into one attractive number.

business caseROI modelingrisk analysisevaluation design
5 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced10–16 hours

Prompt Injection Source-Sink Lab

Build a red-team lab for direct and indirect prompt injection where risk is measured by the actual path from attacker-controlled sources to sensitive sinks and side effects, not only by instruction bypass.

prompt injectionsource-sink analysisdata exfiltrationtool authorization
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced12–18 hours

Agent Capability Supply-Chain Audit

Audit Agent Skills, plugins, MCP servers, and tool catalogs as an executable capability supply chain covering provenance, install boundaries, schemas, authorization, caching, version drift, and revocation.

AI supply chainMCP securitytool provenanceauthorization
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced10–16 hours

AI Security Incident Containment Drill

Exercise an AI-specific incident where prompt injection or a compromised tool has already affected a production workflow. Build evidence-preserving containment, reconciliation, scoped rollback, and regression closure.

incident responsecontainmentforensicsreconciliation
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core6–10 hours

AI Metric Reconciliation Lab

Validate AI-generated SQL and metrics with a semantic contract, deterministic controls, authoritative reconciliation, and regression cases before a number reaches a dashboard or decision.

metric contractsSQL validationdata reconciliationfailure analysis
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core6–10 hours

Analytics Privacy & Lineage Gate

Build a privacy-aware AI analytics pipeline with data minimization, permission checks, lineage, egress controls, retention, and negative tests before sensitive context reaches a model.

data minimizationPII classificationaccess controllineage
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced10–16 hours

Decision-Ready AI Analysis Dossier

Turn AI-assisted analysis into a decision artifact with verified metrics, an evidence ledger, uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, counter-analysis, reproducibility, and refresh/change controls.

decision analysisevidence managementuncertainty analysisreproducibility
5 deliverables · 4 stages
Core8–12 hours

AI Serving Release Envelope Lab

Build a governed release contract for an AI runtime: exact model/config fingerprint, readiness checks, bounded retries, canary, rollback, and runtime verification instead of assuming that green CI already means production truth.

AI servingrelease envelopesruntime verificationcanary rollout
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core8–14 hours

AI Capacity, Cost & Chaos Lab

Stress-test an AI workload across concurrency, token/tool budgets, queues, backpressure, 429/5xx/timeouts, load shedding, degraded mode, and cost per successful verified task.

capacity planningautoscalingqueueingbackpressure
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced10–16 hours

AI Incident Recovery & Reconciliation Drill

Run a production drill for provider outages, model regressions, and uncertain side effects: containment, evidence preservation, reconcile-first recovery, known-good rollback, failback, and incident-to-regression conversion.

AI incident responsecontainmentreconciliationrollback
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Core8–14 hours

AI Observability, SLO & Runtime Evidence Lab

Build an observability contract for an AI workload: end-to-end traces, risk-sliced SLI/SLOs, quality and cost signals, privacy-aware telemetry, authoritative postconditions, and runtime evidence that distinguishes real production state from a polished dashboard.

AI observabilitydistributed tracingSLI/SLO designruntime evidence
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced8–12 hours

AI Grader Calibration & Reliability Lab

Build an evaluation workflow in which a model-based grader is calibrated against human-reviewed evidence, with a disagreement policy, risk slices, and a version-bound release gate.

grader calibrationevaluation designhuman reviewrisk slicing
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced10–14 hours

Agent Side-Effect Test Oracle Lab

Test an agent workflow by its trajectory, permissions, tool calls, side effects, and authoritative system-of-record state—not merely by its final text.

agent testingtrajectory evaluationauthority testingidempotency
4 deliverables · 4 stages
Advanced8–12 hours

AI Incident → Regression Forensics Lab

Turn a production incident into a minimized reproducible testcase, a root-cause slice, a permanent regression, and a verified release/rollback gate.

incident forensicsregression engineeringreplayroot-cause isolation
4 deliverables · 4 stages