Skip to content

Core Handbook Curriculum

Explore the 12-Volume Handbook

This is the academy's sequenced core: foundations, model engineering, generative systems, agents, enterprise architecture, and governance. Use the academy learning path to see where focused courses extend it.

See the complete academy learning path
Volumes
12
Sections
36
Chapters
161
Handbook reading
72 hr 50 min

Volume 1

Volume 1 - Foundations of Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI

3 sections · 15 chapters · 10 hr 20 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewRead Free Preview
Section 1

Evolution of Artificial Intelligence

5 chapters · 3 hr 35 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1The Dream of Thinking MachinesFree
  2. Chapter 2What is Artificial Intelligence?Free
  3. Chapter 3Types of Artificial IntelligenceAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 4AI Summers, AI Winters & the Rise of Modern AIAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 5Symbolic AI vs Machine LearningAcademy Pass
Section 2

Learning Paradigms

5 chapters · 3 hr 45 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 6What is Machine Learning?Academy Pass
  2. Chapter 7Supervised LearningAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 8Unsupervised LearningAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 9Reinforcement LearningAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 10Deep Learning RevolutionAcademy Pass
Section 3

Modern AI

5 chapters · 3 hr lesson reading

  1. Chapter 11Foundation ModelsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 12Large Language ModelsAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 13Generative AIAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 14Multimodal AIAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 15End of Volume Review & Interview QuestionsAcademy Pass

Volume 2

Volume 2 - Mathematics for AI Engineers

3 sections · 19 chapters · 9 hr 45 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

Mathematical Foundations

6 chapters · 3 hr 30 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1Numbers, Functions & GraphsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 2Linear Algebra EssentialsAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3VectorsAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 4MatricesAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 5Matrix MultiplicationAcademy Pass
  6. Chapter 6Eigenvalues & EigenvectorsAcademy Pass
Section 2

Calculus

6 chapters · 2 hr 40 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 7Calculus EssentialsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 8DerivativesAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 9Partial DerivativesAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 10The GradientAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 11The Chain RuleAcademy Pass
  6. Chapter 12Gradient Descent & OptimizationAcademy Pass
Section 3

Probability & Statistics

7 chapters · 3 hr 35 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 13Probability EssentialsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 14Bayes' TheoremAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 15Random VariablesAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 16DistributionsAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 17StatisticsAcademy Pass
  6. Chapter 18Information TheoryAcademy Pass
  7. Chapter 19End of Volume Review & Interview QuestionsAcademy Pass

Volume 3

Volume 3 - Machine Learning Engineering

3 sections · 19 chapters · 8 hr 45 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

Supervised Learning

6 chapters · 2 hr 50 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1The Supervised Learning WorkflowAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 2Linear RegressionAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3Logistic RegressionAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 4Decision TreesAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 5Ensemble MethodsAcademy Pass
  6. Chapter 6Model Evaluation & the Bias-Variance TradeoffAcademy Pass
Section 2

Unsupervised Learning & Dimensionality Reduction

6 chapters · 2 hr 20 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 7Clustering: K-Means from ScratchAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 8Hierarchical & Density-Based ClusteringAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 9Principal Component AnalysisAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 10Anomaly DetectionAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 11Recommender SystemsAcademy Pass
  6. Chapter 12Feature Engineering & Data PreprocessingAcademy Pass
Section 3

ML Engineering in Practice

7 chapters · 3 hr 35 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 13RegularizationAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 14Hyperparameter Tuning & Cross-ValidationAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 15Handling Imbalanced & Messy Real-World DataAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 16Model InterpretabilityAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 17ML Pipelines in ProductionAcademy Pass
  6. Chapter 18Where Classical ML Ends and Deep Learning BeginsAcademy Pass
  7. Chapter 19End of Volume Review & Interview QuestionsAcademy Pass

Volume 4

Volume 4 - Deep Learning Engineering

3 sections · 13 chapters · 6 hr 5 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

Neural Network Foundations

4 chapters · 1 hr 55 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1Neural NetworksAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 2Activation FunctionsAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3Loss FunctionsAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 4BackpropagationAcademy Pass
Section 2

Convolutional & Sequential Architectures

4 chapters · 1 hr 55 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 5Convolutional Neural NetworksAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 6Recurrent Neural NetworksAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 7LSTM NetworksAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 8GRU NetworksAcademy Pass
Section 3

Attention & the Transformer Revolution

5 chapters · 2 hr 15 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 9Attention MechanismsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 10TransformersAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 11BERTAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 12GPT EvolutionAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 13End of Volume Review & Interview QuestionsAcademy Pass

Volume 5

Volume 5 - Large Language Models

3 sections · 14 chapters · 6 hr lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

Representation and Attention Foundations

5 chapters · 2 hr 5 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1TokensAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 2EmbeddingsAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3Positional EncodingAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 4Self-AttentionAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 5Multi-Head AttentionAcademy Pass
Section 2

Training and Alignment

4 chapters · 1 hr 40 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 6PretrainingAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 7Fine-tuningAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 8RLHFAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 9AlignmentAcademy Pass
Section 3

Scaling and Serving in Production

5 chapters · 2 hr 15 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 10Context WindowsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 11QuantizationAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 12DistillationAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 13Model ServingAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 14End of Volume Review & Interview QuestionsAcademy Pass

Volume 6

Volume 6 - Prompt Engineering

3 sections · 12 chapters · 5 hr 15 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

Prompting Foundations

4 chapters · 1 hr 45 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1Prompt BasicsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 2Zero-shot PromptingAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3One-shot PromptingAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 4Few-shot PromptingAcademy Pass
Section 2

Reasoning Patterns

4 chapters · 1 hr 50 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 5Chain of ThoughtAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 6Self-ConsistencyAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 7ReActAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 8Tree of ThoughtsAcademy Pass
Section 3

Production Prompt Engineering

4 chapters · 1 hr 40 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 9Structured OutputAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 10Prompt EvaluationAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 11Prompt LibrariesAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 12End of Volume Review & Prompt Release CapstoneAcademy Pass

Volume 7

Volume 7 - Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

3 sections · 13 chapters · 5 hr 15 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

RAG Foundations

4 chapters · 1 hr 40 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1Why RAG?Academy Pass
  2. Chapter 2EmbeddingsAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3ChunkingAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 4Vector DatabasesAcademy Pass
Section 2

Retrieval Quality

4 chapters · 1 hr 35 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 5RetrievalAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 6Hybrid SearchAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 7Re-rankingAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 8Metadata FilteringAcademy Pass
Section 3

Production RAG

5 chapters · 2 hr lesson reading

  1. Chapter 9Production RAGAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 10RAG EvaluationAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 11Hallucination ReductionAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 12Enterprise Knowledge BasesAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 13End of Volume Review & Production RAG Design ReviewAcademy Pass

Volume 8

Volume 8 - AI Agents

3 sections · 12 chapters · 5 hr 20 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

Agent Foundations

4 chapters · 1 hr 40 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1What is an Agent?Academy Pass
  2. Chapter 2PlanningAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3MemoryAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 4Tool UseAcademy Pass
Section 2

Agent Frameworks

4 chapters · 1 hr 40 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 5LangChainAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 6LangGraphAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 7CrewAIAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 8AutoGenAcademy Pass
Section 3

Enterprise Agent Engineering

4 chapters · 2 hr lesson reading

  1. Chapter 9Enterprise AgentsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 10Agent EvaluationAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 11Agent SafetyAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 12End of Volume Review & Interview QuestionsAcademy Pass

Volume 9

Volume 9 - Model Context Protocol

3 sections · 12 chapters · 4 hr 20 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

MCP Foundations

4 chapters · 1 hr 20 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1Why MCP?Academy Pass
  2. Chapter 2MCP ArchitectureAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3ClientsAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 4ServersAcademy Pass
Section 2

MCP Primitives

4 chapters · 1 hr 25 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 5ToolsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 6ResourcesAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 7PromptsAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 8TransportAcademy Pass
Section 3

Enterprise MCP

4 chapters · 1 hr 35 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 9Enterprise MCPAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 10SecurityAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 11Best PracticesAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 12End of Volume Review & Interview QuestionsAcademy Pass

Volume 10

Volume 10 - Multi-Agent Systems

3 sections · 9 chapters · 4 hr 5 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

Collaboration and Communication Foundations

3 chapters · 1 hr 15 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1Agent CollaborationAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 2CoordinationAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3CommunicationAcademy Pass
Section 2

Multi-Agent Coordination Patterns

3 chapters · 1 hr 15 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 4Supervisor PatternsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 5Swarm PatternsAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 6Debate PatternsAcademy Pass
Section 3

Enterprise Multi-Agent Systems

3 chapters · 1 hr 35 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 7Enterprise Multi-Agent SystemsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 8Workflow OrchestrationAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 9End of Volume Review & Interview QuestionsAcademy Pass

Volume 11

Volume 11 - Enterprise AI Engineering

3 sections · 13 chapters · 4 hr 15 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

Enterprise AI Architecture

4 chapters · 1 hr 20 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1AI ArchitectureAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 2API DesignAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3Event-Driven AIAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 4MicroservicesAcademy Pass
Section 2

AI Operations and Observability

4 chapters · 1 hr 20 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 5AI ObservabilityAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 6MonitoringAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 7LoggingAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 8EvaluationAcademy Pass
Section 3

Security, Cost, Scaling and Reliability

5 chapters · 1 hr 35 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 9SecurityAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 10Cost OptimizationAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 11ScalingAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 12ReliabilityAcademy Pass
  5. Chapter 13Enterprise AI Architecture Capstone & Design ReviewAcademy Pass

Volume 12

Volume 12 - AI Governance and Responsible AI

3 sections · 10 chapters · 3 hr 25 min lesson reading · available now

Volume OverviewBegin VolumeAcademy Pass
Section 1

Responsible AI Foundations

3 chapters · 1 hr 5 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 1AI EthicsAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 2BiasAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 3FairnessAcademy Pass
Section 2

Privacy, Security, and Compliance

3 chapters · 1 hr lesson reading

  1. Chapter 4PrivacyAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 5SecurityAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 6ComplianceAcademy Pass
Section 3

Enterprise Governance and Adoption

4 chapters · 1 hr 20 min lesson reading

  1. Chapter 7AI GovernanceAcademy Pass
  2. Chapter 8Risk ManagementAcademy Pass
  3. Chapter 9Enterprise AdoptionAcademy Pass
  4. Chapter 10End of Volume Review and Interview QuestionsAcademy Pass