Building AI Applications

Why Smarter. Retrieval, tool calling, MCP and multi-agent workflows are each a resource that is declared in a manifest, so a course can cover the whole landscape of AI application architecture in a term, without first teaching a programming language.

Read. Smarter Vectorstore, Smarter MCP Client, Smarter Connection, SQL Plugin, Smarter Orchestrator.

Exercises.

• Load a course syllabus and handbook into a Vectorstore, and build a teaching assistant that answers questions about them, with citations.

• Answer business questions in plain English with a SQL Plugin over a sample database. The built-in data_analyst LLMClient is a worked example.

• Build the same workflow as a single LLMClient and as an Orchestrator of several, and compare cost, latency and quality.

Course plans. Three complete, ready-to-teach plans, each with a schedule, graded assignments and rubrics, two capstone projects, recommended texts, further study and technical prerequisites. See Course Formats and Grading for what the formats have in common.

• Classroom bootcamp: 8 hours
• Two-week online course: 6 hours
• Four-week online course: 12 hours

See the Smarter Instructor Guide to install Smarter and set up a class.