AI Engineering Basics — Cromus Academy
AI Engineering Basics is the first Cromus Academy track — six fully public lessons that build the vocabulary of AI engineering from zero. No account is needed for any lesson; an account is only required to claim the Certificate of Completion.
Lesson 1 covers models, tokens, and context windows, with a live comparison tool backed by the Cromus verified model registry. Lesson 2 turns token prices into cost per run and monthly cost. Lesson 3 explains agents, harnesses, and tools. Lesson 4 covers context engineering and why structure beats prose. Lesson 5 covers evals and reproducibility. Lesson 6 introduces MCP and the Cromus 13-tool surface, including Ops+ approved-skill retrieval and an honest connection-configuration exercise.
Every checkpoint is graded server-side with unlimited attempts, all scoring is deterministic with zero LLM calls, and anonymous progress is stored locally then merged into an account on signup. Each lesson ends with a "Cromus Lens" section connecting the general concept to how Cromus applies it.