[bmdpat]

§ 001 / THE LAB COURSE

The Local AI Engineering Lab

Eight build-first modules. Every open model runs on hardware you control, and every module ends in a benchmark you publish.

8 modules~14.0 hrs hands-onBuild-first, benchmark-gated

Connecting sign-in... If this never resolves, sign-in is misconfigured or blocked. Email pat@bmdpat.com and mention the course.

§ 002 / CURRICULUM

  1. 01
    FOUNDATIONS90m

    LLM Playground on Local Hardware

    Train a tiny GPT, then sample it every way

    Proof: A decoding-strategy benchmark table, quality vs tokens/sec on your card.

  2. ADAPTATION105m

    Fine-Tune Llama 3.1 8B into a Support Bot

    LoRA on one consumer GPU, measured before and after

    Proof: A before/after eval table plus the VRAM and wall-clock cost of the tune.

    Finish module 01 to unlock

  3. RETRIEVAL100m

    Build a Local RAG Pipeline

    Chunk, embed, retrieve, and guard, all on your box

    Proof: A retrieval-quality table comparing three chunking strategies.

    Finish module 02 to unlock

  4. AGENTS110m

    Build an Ask-the-Web Agent

    Routing, reflection, and tools over MCP, priced against the API

    Proof: A local-vs-API cost curve for the same agent trace.

    Finish module 03 to unlock

  5. REASONING105m

    Add a Deep Research Capability

    Spend inference-time compute on a local reasoning model, and measure it

    Proof: An inference-time-scaling curve, answer quality vs thinking tokens.

    Finish module 04 to unlock

  6. GENERATION95m

    Ship a Local Diffusion Image Service

    Text-to-image behind a small API, benchmarked across quant levels

    Proof: A VRAM/latency/quality grid across quant levels for the same prompt.

    Finish module 05 to unlock

  7. OBSERVABILITY115m

    Harden the Agent - Memory, Guards, and Observability

    Make Module 4's agent safe to leave running

    Proof: A red-team log, injection attacks attempted vs which guard caught them.

    Finish module 06 to unlock

  8. CAPSTONE120m

    Capstone - Ship One Production-Shaped Local Agent

    Compose the seven parts into one system a stranger can run

    Proof: A public repo plus a lab report with at least one real benchmark table.

    Finish module 07 to unlock

The Local AI Engineering Lab | Patrick Hughes