The second rung. Model selection and orchestration, prompt engineering as a professional discipline, retrieval-augmented generation, agents and tool use, the Audit Discipline with the open-source Nexuscone primitive, and testing AI-built code with the same rigour as any other production system. Capstone delivers two deployed AI applications with full architectural decision records.
The current model landscape. Cost per token, cost per task, cost per user. LLM routers including the Aperintel AI Gateway pattern. Multi-provider fallback chains using Marktrader's Lumen cascade as the worked example. Caching to reduce cost.
The Aperintel Prompting Protocol at depth. The Personal Genome and the Founder Genome. Anti-cliché output discipline. Structured output: JSON schemas, function calling, tool use. The honour code on AI-assisted output.
What an embedding is. Vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant). Chunking strategies. Hybrid search as the default. Citation patterns. Worked example: the Aperintel AI Gateway's retrieval pattern.
The difference between an LLM call and an agent. MCP servers, function calling, multi-agent orchestration. The runtime cost and runtime risk of agentic systems. When NOT to use an agent (most of the time).
Why audit trails are mandatory for production AI. The cryptographic primitives in plain English. The Nexuscone library walkthrough. Wiring Nexuscone into any application. OpenTimestamps anchoring when the v0.2 release lands.
Why AI-generated code needs more testing, not less. Unit testing, integration testing, evaluation suites for AI behaviour. Regression testing when you swap models. Test-driven development with AI in the loop.
Two production-grade AI projects, designed by the student, deployed publicly, with full architectural decision records. Mid-cohort review and one-to-one mentor sessions on the capstone.
Presenting AI-assisted shipping evidence in interviews. What hiring pipelines screen for now. Day-rate contracting versus permanent employment. Building a public portfolio that compounds.