Straight answers

A course that takes you from never having written code to building AI systems a business can use. Every unit works for one client, Lantern Home, a fictional online shop that sells ordinary things for the home. Its support team answers about three thousand customer messages a month, and over the course you build, piece by piece, a system that reads a customer's message, finds the order and the delivery record, checks the shop's rulebook, and either decides or hands the case to a person. The whole course has 13 phases and about 889 hours of work. What you can buy today is Phase 0 and Phase 1.

A unit that asks you to hand something in has an upload box on its page. You upload the file it asks for, and automated checks run your program on our server, in an isolated container with the unit's own files, so the result does not depend on your computer. Each check reports Passed or Not yet and says what it looked for. The checks are the same for everyone, and today they decide the result on their own, with no language model involved. Before any unit is graded by a language model, we will test that grading against work people have graded by hand. You do not need git to hand anything in; Phase 1 teaches git in unit 1.2.1.

You can write code with one, and nothing in the grading can tell who wrote a file. The checks only say whether your program does what the unit asks. Each unit builds on the one before, though, so a program you did not write leaves you behind on the next one. The course's own tutor will explain anything in the unit, but it will not write the program you hand in for you.

Once you have paid, every unit has a tutor you can ask at any hour. It has read the whole lesson, so it can explain a concept again, walk through an error message, or help with your setup. If you ask about basic Python the lesson does not cover, it explains that too and tells you the lesson does not cover it. Once you are writing the program you hand in, it helps you find your own mistake and asks you questions, but it will not write that program for you. Each student has a budget for the tutor, and your dashboard shows how much of it you have used.

Phase 0 and Phase 1 take about 109 hours of hands-on work. At 12 to 15 hours a week that is roughly 7 to 9 weeks. The whole course is about 889 hours, roughly 14 to 17 months at the same pace.

The platform runs today: accounts, payment, the lessons, practice with automated checks, the tutor, uploads and their results. We publish units as we finish writing them, and these are open today: units 0.1, 0.2 and 1.1.1. Unit 0.1 is free. Paying opens every unit in Phase 0 and Phase 1, including the ones we have not finished yet, as they land. The order of the units is a recommended path, not a lock, so you can start wherever you like. Later phases are not on sale yet. There are no videos: every lesson is written.

One payment opens Phase 0 and Phase 1. The price is on the pricing page and again at checkout, before you pay. There is no subscription and nothing renews. Unit 0.1 is free, so read it before you decide.

Beginners. You need to be comfortable using a computer and installing software. You do not need to have written any code before: Phase 1 starts from your first line. The unit that walks you through installing Python on your own computer, 0.3, is not published yet. If you can already program, the early units will go quickly, and since paying opens every Phase 0 and Phase 1 unit, you can skip ahead.

From Phase 0 and Phase 1: Python programs you wrote yourself that work on Lantern's files, each one run by the same automated checks as everyone else's, and a record of every upload and its result on your dashboard. There is no certificate. The record shows exactly what your programs did.