Before you can build anything that talks to an LLM, you need the ordinary developer skills that every agent is built on top of. This module is the on-ramp: it assumes little to no prior experience, and it's here so that nothing in the rest of the course — API calls, tool definitions, MCP servers — feels unfamiliar for the wrong reasons.
It starts with how the internet actually works: the client-server model, and how a request gets from your browser to a server and back. From there it covers the three practical skills you'll lean on constantly: Git and GitHub for tracking and sharing your code, the command line for running scripts and managing files without a GUI, and REST APIs — HTTP methods, status codes, and how a client and server exchange data — which is exactly the shape of thing an LLM tool call is built to trigger.
Watch the lessons in order, then continue on to LLM Foundations.
Computer hardware and software basics, binary and data, IP addresses, and how the internet moves data between machines — the mental model everything else in this module builds on.
The working directory, staging area, and repository; core commands like add, commit, and push; branching and merging; and how pull requests work — the version control habits you'll use on every project.
Setting up and navigating the terminal, managing files and directories, and reading and writing data from the command line — required for running scripts, servers, and just about every tool later in this course.
What an API is and why they exist, hands-on practice calling real APIs, authentication, and reading documentation — the same shape of request/response an agent's tools will make under the hood.
What a backend actually is, how a frontend talks to it over HTTP, HTTP methods and status codes explained, and building real CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) endpoints end to end.