History, background & first steps

Turn curiosity into your first experiment. Trace the ideas behind language models, then put them to work with real API calls.

YOUR STUDY DESK

01 ✧

Read the lesson

Follow the ideas, mathematics, and worked examples.

Open lesson 02 ✧

Open your notebook

Test your understanding with hands-on experiments.

Start experimenting 03 ✧

Watch the conversation

Learn alongside the recorded session.

View recordings

Readings

Optional But Recommended

Understanding LLMs

• Google LLM Crash Course — Clear explanation of what LLMs are, how they work at a high level

Tokenization

• OpenAI’s Tokenizer Tool — Interactive tool to see how text becomes tokens
• Hugging Face NLP Course: Tokenizers — Understanding why tokenization matters

Temperature & Sampling (15 min)

• OpenRouter’s Model Parameters Guide — Explains temperature, top-p, and other sampling parameters

Tool Use / Function Calling (10 min)

• OpenAI’s Function Calling Guide — How LLMs work with arbitrary tools/functions