SKILLS MAP
What an FDE actually knows
Six domains, from the customer conversation to the production pager. Skills link to the lessons, courses and case studies that teach them; unlinked skills mark where the catalog is still growing.
FDE Discovery
Turning a customer's ask into a system worth building. The half of the job that happens before code.
- Customer discovery Course 005 case study
- Workflow mapping Course 005 case study
- Requirements Course 005 case study
- Success criteria lesson Course 001
- AI suitability lesson Course 001
AI Engineering
The model-facing craft: agents, context, tools, memory, and the evaluation loops that keep them honest.
- Models Anthropic docs
- Agents lesson Course 001
- RAG Anthropic on context engineering
- Context lesson Course 001 case study
- Memory lesson Course 001
- Tools lesson Course 001 case study
- Evals lesson Course 001Course 002 Hamel Husain, LLM-as-a-judge
Software Engineering
The load-bearing fundamentals AI systems inherit: APIs, data, distribution, testing, security.
- APIs lesson Course 001
- Databases lessonlesson Course 001
- Distributed systems lessonlesson Course 001 case study
- Testing lesson Course 001
- Security lesson Course 001Course 003
Deployment Engineering
Everything between working code and a system a customer can rely on.
- Identity Course 003
- Networking lesson Course 001
- Observability lesson Course 001 case study
- CI/CD lesson Course 001
- Cost lesson Course 001
- Reliability lesson Course 001
AI-Native Development
Building software with coding agents as a discipline rather than a novelty.
- Coding agents lesson Course 001Course 004 case study
- Repository engineering Course 004 case study
- Specification Course 004
- Verification lesson Course 004 case study
Customer Engineering
Operating in someone else's reality: tradeoffs, stakeholders, rollout, and the feedback loop after launch.
- Architecture tradeoffs lesson Course 001
- Stakeholder communication Course 005
- Production rollout lesson Course 001Course 003
- Feedback loops lesson Course 002
Then go do it
Skills stick when they meet an unscripted problem. The FDE Lab runs client-shaped challenges with a reliability bar and public reports; it is where this map stops being a map.