Gap check: find the three areas to study next
Replace the scores with your own. The order is lowest score first, and the original order breaks ties.
You now have the foundation of LLM engineering. This topic shows how to find your weakest area, which courses on Hectal go deeper (two are still planned), how role roadmaps will build on this course, and what a portfolio should contain.
Change the code and press Run (Ctrl+Enter). Predict what will happen first, then break it on purpose and read what changes. Your edits are saved and match the lesson page.
Ready for more? This phase has 5 hands-on exercises with automatic checks.
Practice questions
Write the code in the editor, run it, then open the model answer to compare.
Write next_steps(weak_areas) that maps the weak areas retrieval, tools and operations to the coming RAG and Vector Search course, the coming AI Agents course and the Observability course, and ignores other areas. Show it on three areas.
Write readiness(scores) that turns a list of 0 to 3 ratings into an integer percentage of the maximum. Show it on the seven ratings 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 0.
Explain it without notes
How would you decide what to study after finishing this course?
What should be in an LLM engineering portfolio, and why?
How do you keep your skills current when models change monthly?
Expected output
1. operations (score 0): Phase 11, and the Observability course on this site
2. retrieval and RAG (score 1): Phase 8, then the coming RAG and Vector Search course
3. evaluation (score 1): Phase 9
portfolio: 2 of 4 pieces ready
still to write: an eval report with numbers
still to write: a short design doc with trade-offs