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Explore the curriculum

Find the failure you want to understand.

Every story sits in one of four schools, inside one subject, and declares one level. Start with the school that matches the question you are asking, then choose how much reasoning you want to do.

4 schools14 subjects13 published storieswhat is mapped but not yet written →

Step 1

Pick a school

Four schools divide the curriculum by the question they answer. Each holds three or four subjects.

Step 2

Choose how deep to go

Levels describe the reasoning a story asks for, not how obscure its vocabulary is.

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Narrow it further

Subjects sit inside a school. Content areas are the exact capabilities inside a subject.

13 stories

Beginner

Introduces one principal mechanism and asks the reader to recognize or directly apply it.

5 stories
School IHow software executes and changesBeginner

The green test that had never been told the rule

The regression suite recorded sixty real rider-days from production. Two years later it approved the wrong fare rule, then reported the correct fix as a regression.

Subject
03 · Software design, testing, and safe evolution +1 more
Content area
Behavior specification, regression evidence, and safe change +1 more
Characterization testExpectation provenanceExecutable specificationEffective-dated rule
School IIWhere truth lives and movesBeginner

The fine-tune that answered with last week’s policy

The model passed every launch check. Then one policy sentence changed, and its confident answer stayed frozen in time.

Subject
04 · Data, storage, retrieval, and memory +1 more
Content area
Current and attributable knowledge +1 more
Parametric vs non-parametric knowledgeRetrieval-augmented generationRAG vs fine-tuningIndexing pipeline vs query pipeline+1
School IIIHow production systems are operated and trustedBeginner

The healthy cell that no request could reach

Five cells were healthy and held every job. The shared layer in front of them could not find out which cell to ask.

Subject
07 · Architecture, platforms, and cloud control planes +1 more
Content area
Control-plane and data-plane boundaries on the serving path +2 more
Control planeData planeCellStatic stability
School IVHow intelligent systems are built and governedBeginner

The package no technician had inspected

PackProof inspected every package through six cameras. Its weekly training table still invented physical evidence for packages no technician had examined.

Subject
11 · ML systems and decision quality
Content area
Label, outcome, and observation contracts +1 more
Outcome, observation, and labelUnknown versus negative labelLabel availability timeLabel lineage and revision
School IVHow intelligent systems are built and governedBeginner

The valid zone that could not hold the pallet

The schema allowed only real, open warehouse zones. One of those valid choices still could not hold the pallet it was assigned.

Subject
12 · Generative model behavior, adaptation, and inference
Content area
Structured generation, semantic validation, bounded repair, and abstention
Structured generationStructural validitySemantic compatibilityAbstention

Advanced

Requires tracing interacting mechanisms and comparing material production tradeoffs.

4 stories
School IIWhere truth lives and movesAdvanced

The replay that reproduced every event and changed the bill

The backfill matched every offset, key and timestamp. One value it read from outside the log had changed its mind about a day that had already been settled.

Subject
06 · Event-driven and analytical data systems +2 more
Content area
Event time, replay, and rebuild determinism +3 more
As-of enrichmentReplay determinismValid time versus assertion timeCross-key invariant+1
School IIIHow production systems are operated and trustedAdvanced

The retry that made the outage worse

A fraud-review slowdown became a fleet-wide retry amplifier—and the AI orchestration layer multiplied the load before anyone saw the feedback loop.

Subject
08 · Reliability, observability, and incident engineering +3 more
Content area
Retry amplification and recovery control +1 more
TimeoutRetryExponential backoffJitter+4
School IVHow intelligent systems are built and governedAdvanced

The shadow model judged by the old model’s evidence

The candidate ran safely in shadow mode. The incumbent still decided which field evidence could exist—and therefore which model looked better.

Subject
11 · ML systems and decision quality
Content area
Operational thresholds, reviewer queues, and feedback bias
Decision policyShadow evaluationSelective labelsSampling frame+1
School IVHow intelligent systems are built and governedAdvanced

The right model that arrived too late

The router chose the correct reasoning model. Adaptive inference then spent the verification window the critical request needed.

Subject
12 · Generative model behavior, adaptation, and inference
Content area
Model portfolios, routing, cascades, risk vetoes, and fallback semantics +2 more
Reasoning budgetAdmission controlPrefill versus decodeDeadline class+1

Professional

Requires defending a cross-boundary production decision under ambiguity, changing evidence, or organizational constraints.

4 stories
School IVHow intelligent systems are built and governedProfessional

The rollback that left one deal in two model versions

Future traffic returned to the old model release. One approved deal had already crossed the boundary in an old summary, then propagated through booking, collateral, notices, evaluation, and learning data.

Subject
12 · Generative model behavior, adaptation, and inference
Content area
Behavioral versioning, provider change, coexistence, migration, and rollback +1 more
Behavior bundleBehavioral release identityMixed-version coexistenceAttempt and descendant lineage+1
School IVHow intelligent systems are built and governedProfessional

The interruption that stopped the sentence and not the payment

Barge-in stopped the audio, the model, and the turn, and asked the tool to stop. The payment had already been accepted, and the assistant said it had been held.

Subject
13 · Agentic and multimodal product systems +3 more
Content area
Turn detection, full duplex, and interruption +3 more
Cancellation domainCommitted turnUnheard-output cursorIrreversible commit point+1
School IVHow intelligent systems are built and governedProfessional

The failover agent that mistook no answer for no action

The model proposed the right recovery. The human approved it. Then one lost cloud response split what the workflow knew from what production had already done.

Subject
13 · Agentic and multimodal product systems +3 more
Content area
Durable execution and authoritative workflow state +2 more
State persistence and checkpointingIdempotency keyExactly-once semanticsFencing token+1
School IVHow intelligent systems are built and governedProfessional

The export that passed every permission check

Every service enforced its own narrow permission. Together, those permissions released one employee’s exact records to another person.

Subject
13 · Agentic and multimodal product systems +3 more
Content area
Delegated identity, approval binding, and containment
Privilege compositionSource-to-sink authorizationRecord-subject bindingEffect-bound approval+1