Skills, MCP, Plugins, Prompts, and Context. Each of these components handles a specific job in an agentic system. This course unpacks how they work on their own and how they wire together to build agents that plan, use tools, and act on their own.
8 lessons · ~60-80 minutes · Prompt-crafting capstone
A guided tour of the Heart of Gold — your personal AI-augmented development environment. From Hermes Agent at the center to Seafile at the edge, learn how each service works and how they connect into a unified ecosystem.
Most AI tools are chatbots — they generate text but can't do anything with it. Hermes is the layer between a language model and real action: the agent harness that routes messages, picks tools, manages memory, and decides what to do next. The LLM underneath provides the text generation, but every decision runs through the agent layer.
This course walks through setting up that agent layer from scratch — installing it in Docker, configuring independent profiles, wiring up chat channels, loading skills, automating recurring tasks, and hardening everything for regular use. Each lesson takes the "some assembly required" approach: each piece clicks into place one at a time, and by the end you have a self-hosted agent that does real work on your behalf.
~90 minutes · Prompt-crafting capstone included
Project management doesn't have to mean agile jargon, sprint ceremonies, or complex tooling. At its core, it's just a way to organize work so nothing slips through the cracks. This course uses Plane — an open-source project management platform — to walk through the fundamentals of ticket-based work organization, from the big-picture hierarchy down to the daily habits that keep a board healthy. Whether you're a solo operator or running a growing team, you'll learn how to structure your work, describe it clearly to an AI agent, and keep everything moving without over-engineering the process.
8 lessons · ~90 minutes · Prompt-crafting capstone included
Your private file and knowledge ecosystem. Seafile as your self-hosted filing cabinet, Obsidian as your desk for connecting ideas.
LLM Usage Policy Disclaimer — shared across all RAI courses.
