The Forge: Learn Agentic AI
by Building Something Real.
A 6-week live-fire program. You won't just learn AI orchestration — you'll identify a real market problem, build the system, and deploy it to production. The exact skills demanded by Big Tech and taught in $10,000 bootcamps. Just a radically different method.
The Certificate Trap.
Most AI certifications teach valuable skills — but in a vacuum. Learning without market utility is expensive entertainment.
✕ Generic AI Certifications
- — Watch pre-recorded videos on Python and API calls.
- — Build a tutorial project that 10,000 other students also built.
- — Pass a multiple-choice quiz to prove you watched the videos.
- — Get a PDF certificate that employers can't verify.
✓ The Forge
- ⚡ Hunt for real problems. Your pod validates them with real users.
- ⚡ Build in a 4-person pod. Other pods stress-test your product.
- ⚡ Deploy to production. Acquire real users or generate real revenue.
- ⚡ Earn a credential backed by a publicly shipped, verifiable product.
The same agentic AI skills. Learned by shipping.
Every skill below appears in the JHU, IBM, and DeepLearning.AI certifications. We teach them all — through a real product that must prove market demand.
Core AI & Architecture
Agentic Systems & Automation
Safety, Evaluation & Governance
Deployment & Go-To-Market
4 core sessions. 2 electives. 1 capstone.
Discovery
Prototype
Production
Launch
From real problem to live product.
After every session, pods swap builds and run structured peer-reviews — catching bugs, challenging assumptions, and learning from how other teams solve different problems.
Problem Discovery & AI Feasibility
Your pod interviews real users, maps broken workflows, and ranks problems by AI feasibility. You learn how LLMs work — hallucination patterns, confidence calibration, when to trust vs. override — then present your top problem to other pods for structured critique. You leave with a validated problem statement your pod will build against for the next 5 weeks.
Build & Prototype (Zero to Deployed)
Your pod builds the solution using Zapier, Make, Cursor, or direct API orchestration — tools that let you go from idea to working software in minutes, not months. By session end, every pod has deployed software a stranger can use. Between sessions, pods swap products: your pod tests another pod's build, files a structured feedback report, and receives one on yours.
Agents, Guardrails & Production-Readiness
Upgrade your prototype with agentic patterns: chain-of-thought, tool-calling, multi-agent orchestration. The critical skill: guardrail engineering — defining what AI can't do matters more than what it can. Enterprise builders learn to add compliance checkpoints. Indie builders design marketing agents. Every pod commits to a Proof of Utility track and drafts a go-to-market plan.
Quality, Governance & Launch
Pods audit each other's capstones for bias, hallucination, and edge cases. You write a 1-page AI Governance Report — the kind a VP of Engineering would need before signing off on production deployment. Then you build launch infrastructure: marketing agents, landing pages, automated outreach. Your product goes live this week.
The Forge Choices.
Customize your path. Runs alongside your capstone launch.
🧠 RAG Systems & Knowledge Architecture
Build a retrieval-augmented generation pipeline. Vector databases, embeddings, chunking, evaluation. Leave with a working knowledge-base AI for interviews or internal deployment.
👔 AI Strategy for Leaders & Founders
AI vendor evaluation, build vs. buy, team restructuring, ROI modeling. Leave with a 2-page AI Strategy Brief your VP or board can actually use.
💼 AI-Powered Career Transition
Resume and LinkedIn for AI roles. Position your HD Applied AI Architect credential. Mock interviews. Pipeline execution. If you need a promotion or a new role — this is your elective.
🚀 Launch Day: First Customers
Payments, marketing agents, deployment, user acquisition — in one session. The capstone accelerator for pods that want revenue, not just users.
Demo Day.
A public event at Hacker Dojo. Your pod presents the product, proves it works, and demonstrates market demand. Pick your track:
The Bootstrapper
The Growth Hacker
The Intrapreneur
Pass and earn The Mark — the HD Applied AI Architect credential, a public Proof of Work ledger, and a verifiable LinkedIn badge.
Secure Your Seat.
Two paths. Both require you to do the work.
Standard Path
Learn, build, earn the credential.
- 6 weeks of live sessions (4 core + 2 electives)
- Accountability pod placement
- Cross-pod peer review every session
- Demo Day capstone presentation
- The HD Applied AI Architect credential
Premium Architect Path
Maximum support. Maximum accountability.
- Everything in Standard Path, plus:
- Weekly Premium Office Hours
- LinkedIn + Resume Credential Positioning
- 1-on-1 Portfolio Teardown
- Demo Day Pitch Coaching
- Post-Graduation 30-Day Support