Table of contents#

← Back to Jenesys

Every page in Jenesys, one consistent structure per week: an overview link, then Required (in order) and Optional (extra reps and stretch goals, skippable with no gap in later weeks). This mirrors each week's own "Do this in order" checklist exactly; open the week's README.md for the full step-by-step, come back here to jump straight to a specific page.

Built for browsing this folder as an Obsidian vault (open jenesys/ itself as the vault root) and for GitHub: every link is a plain relative path, and every heading below (## for weeks, ### for tracks) is a real Markdown heading, not bold text, so Obsidian's own Outline pane can navigate this whole file.

Start here: Jenesys, the curriculum and the reasoning behind it.

Week 0: Setup#

Overview

Required, in order: a code editor (VS Code), Python 3, git and a GitHub account, a free Groq account (key can wait until Week 4), a blockchain-track RPC provider account (can wait until Week 4). Full steps and the "before you start Week 1" checklist are in the overview page above; this page doesn't split them out further since it's a single short setup document, not a multi-file folder.

Week 1: Foundations I#

Overview

Required, in order:

1. Notes: Variables and data types · Conditionals · Loops · Functions, each read alongside its matching exercises (see exercises overview for the full list: 01-08 core, 10-21 more reps in new domains).
2. Guided walkthroughs: 09: grade report · 22: password audit.
3. Notes: The command line · Git basics · How the internet and APIs work.
4. Project: call a public API.

Optional:

• Project stretch goals (in the same file): a unique-facts filter, a second API, an interactive loop.

Week 2: Foundations II and first project#

Overview

Required, in order:

1. Notes: Web frameworks · Endpoints and routes · Persistence · Error handling, each read alongside exercises/01-04.
2. Exercises overview: 05-07 a second rep in new domains, 08: guided validation endpoint.
3. Notes: Debugging methodology · Organizing your code.
4. Guided first endpoint walkthrough, then the project walkthrough for the rest.
5. Debugging drill: symptoms, diagnose before reading the explanation.

Optional:

• Project stretch goals (in the same file): completed flag, tags, search, sort, pagination, bulk-create, a stats endpoint.

Week 3: Foundations consolidation#

Overview

Required, in order:

1. Notes: What carries over from Week 2 · Redirects and short codes.
2. Guided walkthrough: redirect().
3. Project: a URL shortener.
4. Note: organizing a growing file.
5. Second project: a key-value config store API.
6. Foundations checkpoint: self-check.

Optional:

• Stretch goals in the URL shortener brief (click tracking) and the config store brief (full value-history).

Week 4: Track exposure#

Overview

AI track#

Required, in order:

1. Notes: What a hosted AI model API actually is · Prompts and tokens · What billing actually looks like · You calling the model, versus the model calling a function.
2. Guided build: the chatbot, line by line.
3. Project: a tiny chatbot with memory.

Optional, standalone, any order: personality/cost/memory-cap · a stats command · a clear command · cap message length · log to a file · classify a message · retry with backoff · switch models mid-conversation.

Blockchain track#

Required, in order:

1. Notes: Private keys and addresses · Transactions and gas · Testnets and faucets · What a smart contract actually is.
2. Guided build: Greeter, line by line.
3. Project: deploy and call a trivial smart contract.

Optional, standalone, any order, each a full edit/recompile/redeploy/call cycle: a change counter and reset · an owner-only emergency reset · a second event · a length cap and revert handling · tracking the longest greeting.

Week 5: Guided build#

No shared overview file; each track's own README is the entry point.

AI track#

Overview

Required, in order:

1. Notes: Why retrieval matters · Embeddings and vector search · Organizing Notes Assistant.
2. Guided build: retrieval core, line by line (no API key needed).
3. Exercises: 01 single prompt · 02 multi-turn chat · 03 structured extraction.
4. Project: Notes Assistant v1.

Optional:

• Guided build: citation logic, line by line (no API key needed).
• Exercises overview: 05-11, further standalone reps (substring vs. keyword matching, a second chunking strategy, your own sample note, chunk overlap, stopword tuning, top_k tuning, system-prompt grounding).
• bonus_vector_similarity.py: a real vector and similarity formula in plain Python.

Blockchain track#

Overview

Required, in order:

1. Notes: State and storage · Access control · Events · Common failure modes · Organizing (or not) a walkthrough script.
2. Guided build: AssetRegistry, line by line.
3. Exercises: read and predict (six snippets, two per failure mode).
4. Project: deploy AssetRegistry, then send it a transaction from Python (includes the ABI export step).

Optional:

• Guided build: CreditLedger, line by line, a second, smaller rep of mapping plus access control.
• Two stretch goals in the project brief (an aggregate read function, a fourth event).

Week 6: Low-scaffolding build#

AI track#

Overview

Required, in order:

1. Notes: Tool use (function calling), for real · Failure handling, and why fabricated tool results are a real problem · Organizing Notes Assistant as it grows.
2. Project: give Notes Assistant real tools.

Optional:

• Exercises overview: cheap throwaway reps, tool schema syntax, a tiny tool round-trip, parallel tool calls.
• The stretch goal in the project brief (a third, differently-triggered tool).

Blockchain track#

Overview

Required, in order:

1. Notes: Managed keys · The transaction lifecycle, from a backend's point of view · Event-driven reactivity · Organizing a service, not a script.
2. Project: a managed-key backend service for AssetRegistry.

Optional:

• Practice: get_logs · Practice: filters and get_new_entries, throwaway reps on the Week 4 Greeter contract.
• The stretch goal in the project brief (a manual force re-check trigger).

Week 7: Low-scaffolding build, continued#

AI track#

Overview

Required, in order:

1. Notes: Persistence, for an agent specifically · Robust to a bad or missing input it hasn't seen before · Organizing Notes Assistant, with a second new concern on top.
2. Project: persistence, a second chaining scenario, robustness.

Optional:

• Exercises overview: the SDK-response serialization gotcha, a corrupted history file, trimming a history window.
• The stretch goal in the project brief (a usage log or an undo-last-action).

Blockchain track#

Overview

Required, in order:

1. Notes: Idempotency and retries · Why a small test suite matters, even with no one grading it · Organizing under more weight.
2. Project: harden the AssetRegistry service.

Optional:

• Practice: seen-it-before, with fake data · Practice: catch the regression, no live network.
• The stretch goal in the project brief (a processed/skipped metrics counter, a third event type).

Week 8: Capstone, no safety net#

Overview

Required:

1. Pick one spec. AI track: Docs assistant · Ticket triage service · Research agent. Blockchain track: Acceptance gate (flagship) · Token issuance backend.
2. Self-sufficiency rubric.