Week 01 — Agent patterns, structured outputs, SD framework¶

At a glance

Phase 1: Foundations · Starts: Mon 28 Sep 2026 · Planned: 16h 45m

Build: Capstone repo skeleton: uv + FastAPI + Pydantic structured-output /triage endpoint

By day¶

System Design · 45 min · Hello Interview 'System Design in a Hurry': rebuild your delivery framework (reqs → entities → API → HLD → deep dives) as a one-page checklist → Interview framework & back-of-envelope estimation · resource w01-sd-1
DSA · 25 min · Contains Duplicate + Valid Anagram (hash set / Counter) → Arrays & hashing · resource w01-dsa-1
Python · 20 min · Rep: uv workspace + dependency groups; ruff rule set (I, UP, B, SIM) + ty in pre-commit on capstone → Modern tooling: uv, ruff, ty, pre-commit · resource w01-py-1
Communication · 30 min · Grammar: Articles & determiners: a/the/zero → Week 01 drills · day 1 w01-comm-1

Agentic AI · 60 min · Read Anthropic 'Building effective agents' and map each pattern (chaining, routing, parallelisation, orchestrator-workers, evaluator-optimizer, agents) to an Agentic Ops Copilot use case → Agent & workflow patterns (Building Effective Agents) · resource w01-ai-1
DSA · 30 min · Two Sum + Group Anagrams (hash map keyed by sorted tuple/count signature) → Arrays & hashing · resource w01-dsa-2
Communication · 30 min · Vocabulary: Precision verbs for business (assess, mitigate, prioritise) → Week 01 drills · day 2 w01-comm-2

DSA · 25 min · Top K Frequent Elements (bucket sort vs heap — state both complexities) → Arrays & hashing · resource w01-dsa-3
Architecture · 45 min · Fundamentals of Software Architecture 2e ch1-2: laws of architecture, architecture characteristics; list top-5 characteristics for the capstone → The architect role & trade-off thinking w01-arch-1
Python · 20 min · Rep: Pydantic v2 model_config (strict, frozen, extra='forbid'), field_validator vs model_validator on IncidentTriage → Pydantic v2 in depth w01-py-2
Communication · 30 min · Speaking drill: Pace and deliberate pausing → Week 01 drills · day 3 w01-comm-3

Agentic AI · 60 min · LLM fundamentals refresh: tokenisation, temperature/top-p, reasoning vs non-reasoning models — run one prompt on 2 hosted + 1 Ollama model and log tokens, latency, cost → LLM fundamentals: tokens, transformers, sampling, reasoning models · resource w01-ai-2
Java/Spring AI · 30 min · Modern Java 21→25 tour: records, sealed interfaces, pattern matching for switch — model Incident/Severity as sealed hierarchy → Modern Java 21→25: records, sealed types, patterns · resource w01-java-1
Communication · 30 min · Idioms & phrasal verbs: Workplace basics: touch base, ballpark, on the same page → Week 01 drills · day 4 w01-comm-4

System Design · 45 min · Latency numbers + back-of-envelope drill: estimate QPS, storage and bandwidth for 3 prompts (URL shortener, chat, LLM triage API) in 15 min each → Scalability fundamentals & latency numbers w01-sd-2
DSA · 25 min · Product of Array Except Self (prefix/suffix, O(1) extra space) → Arrays & hashing · resource w01-dsa-4
Python · 20 min · Rep: FastAPI lifespan + dependency-injected settings (pydantic-settings) and httpx AsyncClient reuse → FastAPI for production w01-py-3
Communication · 30 min · Writing: Concise emails and subject lines (BLUF) → Week 01 drills · day 5 w01-comm-5

Agentic AI · 120 min · Capstone build: create repo (uv, ruff, ty, pre-commit, pytest), FastAPI app with lifespan + /health + /triage returning a Pydantic-validated IncidentTriage structured output → Prompting & structured outputs · resource w01-ai-3
DSA · 30 min · Longest Consecutive Sequence + Encode and Decode Strings → Arrays & hashing · resource w01-dsa-5
Java/Spring AI · 30 min · Generate Spring Boot 4 / Java 25 project for the Java side of capstone (web, actuator, Spring AI starter); run /actuator/health → Spring Boot 4 & Spring Framework 7 w01-java-2
Communication · 30 min · Record & shadow: Pace and deliberate pausing → Week 01 drills · day 6 w01-comm-6

System Design · 45 min · Written design: URL shortener at 100M URLs/month — ID generation, KV choice, cache, 301 vs 302, analytics pipeline; 2-page doc → URL shortener w01-sd-3
Architecture · 30 min · Write ADR 001 for capstone: record architecture decisions using MADR template in docs/adr/ → Architecture Decision Records · resource w01-arch-2
Staff+ · 30 min · Read StaffEng archetypes (Tech Lead, Architect, Solver, Right Hand) and note which work you already do → Staff archetypes & operating at Staff+ · resource w01-staff-1
Communication · 30 min · Soft skills + weekly review: Active listening and clarifying questions → Week 01 drills · day 7 w01-comm-7
Review · 60 min · Flashcards: 15 cards on agent patterns + latency numbers; explain-it-back the 6 BEA patterns in 5 min → Agent & workflow patterns (Building Effective Agents) w01-rev-1