In Courses 01 and 02 you built with AI. This time you build something that has AI inside it. A little NPC moves into your Pixel Lab — a real character, powered by live calls to the Claude API — and by the finale it knows your actual projects, walks where you ask, and dreams up entire new rooms on demand. Underneath the pixels, you're building the exact architecture of every AI product you've ever used: a frontend, a server that guards a secret key, and a model on the other end of a wire. Nobody tell the pixels they're a systems diagram.
The chat window is not the AI. What an API is, how the token meter works, and getting your own key — with appropriate paranoia.
Build a tiny backend that holds the key and talks to Claude — the real, professional shape from day one. First words through the wire, via your own port 3000.
A character wanders into the lab, you press E, and it says something nobody scripted. Then you break the server on purpose — and design the failure.
A personality, a memory, and the keys to lab-data. By the end it discusses your real projects like a colleague who actually read the files.
Replies become structured data your game executes — ask for a tour and it walks you there. The exact bridge between "chatbot" and "AI agent."
Walk through a door into a room that didn't exist two seconds ago — invented by a model, saved by your server, drawn by code you wrote a course ago. Plus: the real bill, key hygiene, and graduation.
One email when something new ships — a lesson, a course, a free tool worth stealing. No spam. I don't have time to spam you.
Running a business and would rather all this get built for you? That's literally my job — start with the free audit.