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Llm Application Design Textbook

A free, self-paced textbook in 6 chapters. Read a chapter, then drill it with the 100 companion flashcards using spaced repetition.

6 chapters · 100 cards · Updated

Chapters

  1. 1Foundations of LLM Applications

    An LLM application combines a language model with product logic, data, tools, prompts, and user experience to solve a specific workflow. Rather than treating the model as a standal...

  2. 2Retrieval and Knowledge

    At the heart of any RAG system is the retrieval pipeline, and chunking is its starting point. Chunking splits documents into smaller passages that can be indexed and retrieved effe...

  3. 3Prompts and Output

    Structured output asks the model to return data in a predictable format such as JSON, making it easier to validate and consume by downstream software. To make this reliable in prac...

  4. 4Application Behavior

    LLM applications often span many turns or sessions, which makes conversation memory important. Conversation memory stores relevant user or task context across turns or sessions, en...

  5. 5Safety and Security

    Tool calling introduces real side effects, so tools should have narrow permissions, exposing only the actions and data needed for the task. This limits damage from mistakes or prom...

  6. 6Operations

    Once an LLM application is in production, observability becomes essential. Observability tracks requests, model choices, tools, latency, cost, and failures, making production LLM b...

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