Building LLM Applications - From Principles to Practice

New
·

3 Weeks

·

Cohort-based Course

Drowning in AI trends? Learn the timeless principles behind LLM applications — and build with clarity, not chaos.

Employers, Publishers

GitHub
GitHub Copilot
Eventbrite
Manning Publications
O'Reilly Media

Course overview

Forget one-size-fits-all. Build AI apps as flexible as your imagination.

You’ve built the demo. It works — sort of. But the second you try to shape it into something real, it breaks. You change the task, tweak the workflow, or ask for something custom... and you find that you're stuck. That’s not your fault — it’s what happens when you build on borrowed patterns without understanding the core ideas underneath. This course fixes that. You’ll learn how LLMs actually work — not just how to prompt them, but how to design, combine, and control them across apps, workflows, agents, and more. And you won’t just learn the theory — you’ll build with it. By the end, you’ll be able to take an idea and confidently shape it into the LLM-powered tool you actually want to create.

Who is this course for

01

Engineers who want to cut through the noise, understand how LLMs really work, and build flexible, reliable applications with confidence.

02

PMs who want to harness LLMs for real product wins – and stop wasting time on hype, dead ends, and guessing what’s actually possible.

03

Team leads driving AI initiatives who need more than demos – they need to ship production-worthy AI apps that can continuously improve.

What you’ll get out of this course

Master the Core Mechanics of LLMs

Understand how completion models really work, and how reinforcement learning shaped the capabilities we now use in chat and agents. Build the intuition that lets you wield LLMs intentionally — not just hope they behave.

Control LLM Behavior with Better Prompts

Learn the essential techniques behind zero-shot, few-shot, and advanced prompting strategies. You'll see how to steer models reliably, even in real-world, messy tasks.

Build RAG Systems That Truly Understand and Ground

RAG is the full chain from understanding user intent, crafting smart queries, pulling the best sources, and generating grounded, high-quality outputs. You'll learn how to design each step so your applications are accurate, reliable, and aligned with what users actually need.

Design Smart AI Agents

Build conversational agents and workflow-driven agents that stay on track and complete non-trivial tasks. Learn the design patterns that make agents useful, flexible, and powerful.

Evaluate, Test, and Continuously Improve Your Applications

Master the techniques for offline evaluation, online observability, and iterative improvement — so you’re not flying blind as your app scales.

Customize LLMs with Fine-Tuning and LoRA

When prompting isn't enough, customization is key. Learn when fine-tuning is worth it – and when it's not! Land how to use lightweight LoRA techniques to teach new behaviors or specialize your models.

Get Ready for the Future of AI

Stay ahead by understanding the next frontier: multimodal models, new interaction paradigms, and what’s coming next in AI development.

This course includes

6 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

In-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

Projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Jun 19—Jun 22

    Jun

    19

    Intro; Understanding LLMs; Prompt Engineering

    Thu 6/198:00 PM—9:30 PM (UTC)

Week 2

Jun 23—Jun 29

    Jun

    24

    Office Hours and Homework Review

    Tue 6/248:00 PM—9:00 PM (UTC)

    Jun

    26

    Retrieval-Augmented Generation; Agentic AI (Conversational and Workflows)

    Thu 6/268:00 PM—9:30 PM (UTC)

Week 3

Jun 30—Jul 6

    Jul

    1

    Office Hours and Homework Review

    Tue 7/18:00 PM—9:00 PM (UTC)

    Jul

    3

    Application Evaluation; Fine-Tuning; Looking Forward

    Thu 7/38:00 PM—9:30 PM (UTC)

Week 4

Jul 7—Jul 8

    Jul

    8

    Office Hours and Homework Review

    Tue 7/88:00 PM—9:00 PM (UTC)

What people are saying

        John Berryman is one of the best engineers I’ve ever worked with. He also is a great teacher. I will be taking this course.
Hamel Husain

Hamel Husain

ML Engineer with 20 years experience 
        This course was a big boost for AgilityFeat. Our team covers a wide variety of roles with a range of LLM experience from newbies to advanced engineers who have already built LLM applications for clients. John did a great job of speaking to everyone in the course, and we all left with new knowledge and fresh inspiration!
Arin Sime

Arin Sime

CEO/Founder, AgilityFeat.com
        John's wit and sense of humor, combined with his in-depth LLM knowledge, always helps me learn something new from a different perspective I hadn't considered.
Doug Turnbull

Doug Turnbull

2x Manning Author, Search lead @ Shopify and Reddit
        John brought a fresh perspective to RAG when he spoke to my class. His insights were both technically sharp and immediately applicable. If you're building with LLMs, his course is a must.
Jason Liu

Jason Liu

AI Consultant, creator of Instructor
        I think it's a really useful session we had with John, it's been amazing! All of our team learned a lot, and we covered a wide range of topics from UI to latency. This helped us to come up with solutions to current challenges we face in our work integrating LLMs into communication tools.
Alberto Gonzalez

Alberto Gonzalez

CTO WebRTC.ventures

Meet your instructor

John Berryman

John Berryman

John Berryman is the founder of Arcturus Labs. His journey through AI and search technologies includes contributing to GitHub Copilot's early development, where he worked on the team that brought AI-assisted coding from concept to reality. Throughout his career, John has helped build search and recommendation systems that millions use daily – from GitHub's code search infrastructure to Eventbrite's discovery platform and the US Patent Office's next-generation search system. This blend of experience in both foundational search technologies and cutting-edge AI applications gives him unique insight into building practical, powerful LLM applications.


John shares his expertise through two books: Relevant Search, which reveals the art and science of building search applications, and Prompt Engineering for LLMs, which guides developers through the emerging practice of language model application development.

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Building LLM Applications - From Principles to Practice

Cohort 1

$910

Dates

June 19—July 8, 2025

Payment Deadline

June 17, 2025
Get reimbursed

Course schedule

4-6 hours per week

  • Thursdays

    4:00pm - 5:30pm EST

    Courses content covering everything in the syllabus above and providing the class with a homework assignment for the week.

  • Weekly Projects

    2 - 4 hours per week

    Take time build your own project based upon upon the content we cover that week in the course.

  • Tuesdays

    4:00pm - 5:00pm EST

    Show-and-tell for the progress with the project assignments, and Q&A related to the assignment and the course content.

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Building LLM Applications - From Principles to Practice

Cohort 1

$910

Dates

June 19—July 8, 2025

Payment Deadline

June 17, 2025
Get reimbursed

$910

3 Weeks