ShipWithCare — System thinking for AI builders

Twelve modules

What every AI builder needs to understand

Thinking in Systems

Why systems behave in ways no individual part intended.

Data and State

What data is, how it changes, and why stale state breaks everything.

APIs and Communication

How services talk, what contracts mean, and why integrations fail silently.

Async and Concurrency

What happens when things don't run in order, and why timing matters.

Testing and Validation

How to know if something works, and the real cost of skipping it.

Reliability and Error Handling

What failure looks like in production, and how to design for it.

Scaling and Performance

Why performance matters before it becomes a problem, and what to watch.

Security Basics

What attackers look for, and the new attack surfaces AI systems introduce.

Module breakdown

Each module in detail

01 Foundation

Introduction

Why AI makes building easy but systems hard — and what separates a working demo from a system that holds up in the real world.

AI and systemsReal-world complexityCourse framing

Building with AI lowers the floor but raises the ceiling of what can go wrong.

2 min read

02 Foundation

System Thinking

Everything you build is a system. Understanding components, interactions, data flow, and side effects is what lets you reason about behaviour before it surprises you in production.

ComponentsData flowSide effectsDependencies

Systems produce outcomes that no single component intended.

2 min read

03 Foundation

Where Your Code Runs

Client, server, web, native — where code runs determines what it can do, what it can access, and who can be trusted. Most security and performance problems start with a misunderstanding here.

Client vs serverWeb vs nativeTrust boundariesTrade-offs

Misplaced trust boundaries are the root cause of most application security failures.

2 min read

04 Foundation

Working Safely with AI

AI tools can write code faster than you can review it. Understanding how AI modifies code, what churn looks like, and how to iterate with control keeps you in charge of the system you're building.

AI code changesCode churnIterating safelyChange control

Speed without control produces technical debt faster than it produces features.

2 min read

05 Foundation

Version Control and Testing

Commits, history, and tests are how you preserve the ability to change things safely. Without them, every change is a risk you cannot quantify and cannot reverse.

Version controlUnit testsIntegration testsRegressions

Without version control and tests, every change is a gamble with no undo.

2 min read

06 Foundation

Data and State

What your system knows at any moment is determined by its state. Understanding persistent vs temporary data, consistency, and data quality is fundamental to building systems that behave predictably.

State managementData qualityConsistencyLifecycle

AI models are only as reliable as the data pipeline feeding them.

2 min read

07 Production

APIs and Communication

Modern systems communicate through APIs. Understanding requests, responses, contracts, and the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication is the basis for building reliable integrations.

RESTWebSocketSync vs asyncContracts

Silent API failures are the hardest class of bugs to diagnose.

2 min read

08 Production

Reliability and Concurrency

Production systems fail. Multi-user systems run code simultaneously. Understanding error handling, retries, idempotency, and race conditions is what separates systems that recover from systems that don't.

Error handlingRetriesIdempotencyRace conditions

Concurrency bugs are non-deterministic — they disappear when you look for them.

2 min read

09 Production

Security and Privacy

Security is not a feature you add at the end. From input validation to authentication, secrets management, and data exposure, understanding the attack surface of your system is a building requirement.

Input validationAuthenticationOWASPSecretsPrivacy

Most security incidents come from misplaced trust, not sophisticated attacks.

2 min read

10 Production

Architecture and Dependencies

How you structure a system determines how it evolves. Monolith vs services, separation of concerns, and third-party dependencies all create constraints that compound over time.

Monolith vs servicesSeparation of concernsDependencies

Architectural decisions made early are the most expensive to reverse later.

2 min read

11 Production

Deployment and Operations

Code that isn't in production isn't delivering value. Understanding CI/CD, environments, configuration, logging, and how to debug in production closes the loop between building and operating.

CI/CDEnvironmentsLoggingMonitoringDebugging

Most production failures are discovered by users, not monitoring — until you build it properly.

2 min read

12 Production

Scaling, Performance and Cost

Systems that work for ten users often break for a thousand. Caching, performance basics, rate limiting, and cost awareness are what keep a growing system from becoming an expensive liability.

CachingPerformanceRate limitingCost awarenessGrowth

Performance problems found in production cost ten times more to fix than those found in design.

2 min read

Jon
Tiller

What every AI builder needs to understand

Thinking in Systems

Data and State

APIs and Communication

Async and Concurrency

Testing and Validation

Reliability and Error Handling

Scaling and Performance

Security Basics

Each module in detail

Introduction

System Thinking

Where Your Code Runs

Working Safely with AI

Version Control and Testing

Data and State

APIs and Communication

Reliability and Concurrency

Security and Privacy

Architecture and Dependencies

Deployment and Operations

Scaling, Performance and Cost

Better understanding.
Better decisions.

JonTiller

What every AI builder needs to understand

Thinking in Systems

Data and State

APIs and Communication

Async and Concurrency

Testing and Validation

Reliability and Error Handling

Scaling and Performance

Security Basics

Each module in detail

Introduction

System Thinking

Where Your Code Runs

Working Safely with AI

Version Control and Testing

Data and State

APIs and Communication

Reliability and Concurrency

Security and Privacy

Architecture and Dependencies

Deployment and Operations

Scaling, Performance and Cost

From guessworkto grounded decisions.

Better understanding.Better decisions.

Jon
Tiller

From guesswork
to grounded decisions.

Better understanding.
Better decisions.