Learn to operate AI as a programmable system — not just prompt a chatbot. Build persistent agents, private document environments, and multi-agent workflows across Claude Desktop's Chat, Cowork, and Code surfaces — working for you around the clock.
I spent over two decades in Silicon Valley navigating technology disruptions that made entire skill stacks obsolete every five to seven years. The engineers who survived weren't the ones who memorized a single platform — they were the ones who had built a system for learning itself.
That system is what I now teach. I'm not here to sell you a course. I'm here to sit alongside you, watch you work through real tasks in real time, and help you build the architectural thinking that makes every future AI transition faster than the last.
— Mike Cho
The curriculum runs on Claude Desktop's three surfaces — and the skills transfer to any platform that follows the same pattern. You'll learn when to sit in each seat, and how to hand work between them.
Deep research, project workspaces, private document knowledge (RAG), persistent memory. Where every piece of work begins — and where the AI learns your world.
Multi-step tasks running in a safe, sandboxed environment: file processing, document generation, browser work, scheduled jobs — an assistant that works while you don't.
Claude Code in your editor and its command-line agent on a cloud Linux machine — where durable automation, real infrastructure, and around-the-clock agents live.
Compare the major AI platforms on your real work. Read input / output / blended rate cards, set spending caps, and choose pay-as-you-go over volatile free tiers. Configure privacy opt-out across every account. Build the verification reflex — the human moat that survives every model upgrade.
Build a Professional Master Prompt that travels with you across Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok. Engineer persistent memory — custom instructions, project knowledge, reusable context files — so your AI knows your world on day one. Master the interview method and cost-aware model routing, working from the Chat seat.
Track A — Browser-first: delegate real multi-step work to Claude Cowork's sandboxed agent — file batches, document pipelines, web tasks — with permission scoping and safety gates from day one. Track B — Terminal-first: direct Claude Code and its CLI as an engineering partner in VS Code or PyCharm. Both tracks wire MCP tool connections and build a private document environment (RAG) that reasons over your own files. You leave with a live agent doing real work — no code required on Track A.
Stand up your own cloud VPS Linux machine (~$5/month) and bootstrap headless Claude Code CLI on it — an agent that runs scheduled workflows around the clock, even with your laptop closed. Wire OAuth integrations — Drive, Gmail, Notion, GitHub — and build multi-agent pipelines (research → generate → publish). Develop the judgment to know which agent for which job, with live credit monitoring and safe shutdown protocols throughout.
Direct AI end-to-end through the 5D method to design, build, and deploy an interactive web application powered by frontier LLM APIs — a portfolio-grade artifact you own and can show. Package your workflows as reusable skills, connect custom MCP servers, and graduate with a system that keeps working after the mentorship ends. An optional technical track goes deeper for those with an existing codebase.
Borrowed from 25 years of professional engineering practice and rebuilt for the AI era: every project moves through five phases, and the graded skill is catching what the AI gets wrong — not just accepting what runs.
Let Claude operate your Mac's desktop — opening apps, moving files, running real workflows under your supervision. Taught with strict permission scoping and a watch-then-approve discipline.
Put an agent inside your browser: form filling, multi-tab research, page-level actions. Covers headed browsing you can watch — and headless automation the CLI can run without a screen.
Your own always-on Linux machine for ~$5/month — the home for headless Claude Code CLI, scheduled agents, and everything that should keep running when your laptop doesn't.
The rates above are the friends-and-family rates — mention your referrer when you book. Every mentorship starts with a free 30-minute goals conversation, so your first session is already personalized before we meet. No long-term lock-in: month to month, cancel anytime. Advanced phases (🟣 Purple Belt and 🟤 Brown Belt — cloud agents, VPS labs, and the capstone build) are available by arrangement for continuing students who complete Green Belt.
This program is community work at heart. White-collar career paths are narrowing, and a lot of families — parents and young people alike — are feeling uncertain about what comes next. Durable AI operating skills are the most practical answer I know how to give: not hype, not fear, just a system for staying capable no matter how the tools change.
A Silicon Valley engineering veteran with 25+ years navigating every major technology disruption of the past three decades — the dot-com bust, the telecom collapse, outsourcing waves, offshoring transitions, and now the AI shift. Throughout that arc the role was never static: full-time engineer at some stages, independent project-based consultant at others — each engagement requiring rapid onboarding into unfamiliar technical environments, new automation systems, and different organizational workflows. The self-learning discipline that made that possible across 25 years is not a classroom framework. It is the foundation this curriculum was built from.
Programs: Cisco Systems (San Jose & Bangalore) · Aviat (Santa Clara → Slovenia R&D offshoring transition) · Infineon / Texas Instruments DSL unit post-acquisition.
Your actual goals, your actual workflows, your actual daily tasks — not pre-designed exercises. You drive the keyboard. I coach live. Let's build something you can use tomorrow.