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CodeStoa

Free · No sign-up · Beginner to interview

Become an AI engineer, one topic at a time.

A step-by-step roadmap from how LLMs work to RAG, agents and shipping to production, and on to the interview. Every topic is an animated video, a written lesson and a quick quiz.

§ 01

The AI Engineer roadmap

Five stages, from your first look at how a language model works to designing AI systems in an interview. Each lesson needs only the ones before it.

  1. Stage 01 · Beginner

    Foundations

    What an AI engineer does, how a language model turns text into an answer, how to pick one, and how to talk to it with prompts and code.

    2 of 25 lessons live

  2. Stage 02 · Intermediate

    Build With Your Data

    Give a model your own documents with embeddings and RAG, then prove your app works with evals.

    4 of 19 lessons live

  3. Stage 03 · Advanced

    Agents

    Models that plan, call tools and check their own work: the agent loop, MCP, multi-agent systems and context engineering.

    4 of 17 lessons live

  4. Stage 04 · Advanced

    Production

    Ship it safely and keep it fast, cheap and correct: security, observability, serving, fine-tuning and multimodal.

    0 of 22 lessons live

  5. Stage 05 · Interview

    Interview Ready

    Put it all together the way interviews ask: design a real AI system end to end and defend each trade-off.

    0 of 6 lessons live

  6. Every topic, in order, with your progress.

    See the full roadmap

§ 02

Watch it. Read it. Prove it.

Every lesson gives you three ways into the same idea, because understanding sticks when you see it, read it and use it.

  1. 01 · Watch

    A short animated explainer, narrated, with Vora as your guide: diagrams move, data flows, code runs.

  2. 02 · Read

    The night before the exam

    It's the night before Arjun's economics exam. They paste a whole semester of notes, six chapters, into an AI study helper. Then they ask a question from Chapter 1: "What is opportunity cost?"

    A written deep dive at your own pace, with code that has been run before it was published.

  3. 03 · Practice

    Arjun's notes clearly include Chapter 1, yet the helper says the topic isn't covered. What is the most likely reason?

    A short quiz that explains every answer, right or wrong.

See the whole lesson: Context Window Explained: Why an AI Model Forgets

§ 03

Latest lessons

New lessons are added as they pass review.

  • 3:25

    AI Engineering Beginner 3 min read

    Context Window Explained: Why an AI Model Forgets

    An AI model can only see a fixed amount of text at once: its context window. When your text doesn't fit, part of it is cut, and the model seems to forget.

    Oct 26, 2026

  • 7:40

    AI Engineering Beginner 6 min read

    AI Agent Guardrails: Limits That Keep an Agent Safe

    Asking the model nicely in the prompt is not a guardrail. A guardrail is a check your code runs around the model, and it can say no whatever the message says.

    Oct 25, 2026

  • 4:40

    AI Engineering Beginner 5 min read

    What Is MCP? How an AI Assistant Plugs Into Your Tools

    MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is one shared plug between AI apps and tools. Follow Alex asking their assistant to book an hour with Bob, and see 12 custom connections become 7 pieces.

    Oct 25, 2026

  • 7:29

    AI Engineering Beginner 6 min read

    The Agent Loop: How an LLM Plans, Acts and Knows When to Stop

    An agent is a model inside a loop: it reads the goal and the history, picks the next tool, sees the result, and repeats. Loop engineering is designing that loop on purpose, including how it stops.

    Oct 24, 2026

  • 7:04

    AI Engineering Beginner 6 min read

    Tool Calling: How an Agent Picks and Uses a Tool

    The model never runs a tool. It writes a call, a tool name plus arguments, and your code checks it, runs it and hands back the result. Here is one round trip, start to finish, at a small cinema.

    Oct 24, 2026

  • 8:02

    AI Engineering Intermediate 7 min read

    Jev Explained: A Decision Model vs an LLM

    An LLM writes an answer word by word. A decision model like Jev picks one answer from your list and says how sure it is, so software can act on every event. Here's how, and what's still unproven.

    Oct 24, 2026

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§ 04

Questions

Who is Code Stoa for?

Developers and students who want to become AI engineers, and engineers preparing for AI engineering interviews. You can start from zero: the roadmap goes one topic at a time, and each lesson builds only on the ones before it.

Is it free?

Yes. Every lesson, video and quiz is free. No paywalls, no pop-ups.

Do I need an account?

No, there's no sign-up. When you mark a lesson as done, that's saved in your browser only, so it stays on this device and nothing is sent to us.

What does each lesson include?

An animated, narrated video with captions, a written deep dive with callouts and key takeaways, code that is run in a sandbox before it's published, and a short quiz.

How are lessons made?

Each lesson starts from the author's own notes. Every claim is checked, every code example is run in a sandbox, and the author reviews and signs off on each lesson before it goes live.

How often do new lessons come out?

There's no fixed schedule: new lessons are added as they pass review. The RSS feed, linked in the footer, announces each one.

How do I get help or send feedback?

Email support@codestoa.com if something isn't working, like a video that won't play or a broken link. Email feedback@codestoa.com to report a mistake in a lesson or suggest a topic. The author reads every message.