Lessons
1HTTP, REST, and API design that survives clients50 min read
REST resources, status semantics, error envelopes, versioning, cursor pagination, rate limits, and async job patterns for LLM backends.
- →HTTP and AI APIs
2Data modeling, transactions, and when not to normalize52 min read
Entities and invariants, normalization tradeoffs, transactions and isolation, indexes, migrations, and modeling LLM runs for production.
- →Backend Data and Performance
3AuthN/Z: sessions, tokens, RBAC, service identity50 min read
Sessions vs JWT, OAuth altitude, RBAC and object-level authz, service-to-service identity, API keys, and agent tool authorization.
- →Authentication and Authorization
4Async work: queues, workers, retries, DLQs50 min read
Task queues vs logs, producer/consumer design, retries and backoff, leases, DLQs, lag/backpressure, and LLM worker operations.
- →Asynchronous Work
5Idempotency, exactly-once illusions, and webhooks48 min read
Idempotency keys, concurrent claim, webhook verification and dedupe, at-least-once consumers, and effect-once for billing and LLM runs.
- →Retry-Safe Effects
6Caching, pagination, and hot-path performance50 min read
Cache-aside and invalidation, stampede control, N+1 elimination, keyset pagination, HTTP caching altitude, and LLM-related cache choices.
- →Backend Data and Performance
7Logs, metrics, traces, and on-call for backends52 min read
RED/USE, SLIs/SLOs and error budgets, structured logs, cardinality, tracing across queues, alerting, and LLM-specific ops signals.
- →Backend Reliability
8Capstone: design a reliable LLM feature backend55 min read
End-to-end mock: Diff Explain SaaS — API, data model, authz, queues, idempotent billing, caching, SLOs, and a 45-minute self-scored rubric.
- →HTTP and AI APIs
- →Retry-Safe Effects
- →Backend Reliability
Skills in this course
- 01HTTP and AI APIsDesign stable resource, error, pagination, streaming, and long-work contracts.
- 02Backend Data and PerformanceModel transactional truth, indexes, migrations, caches, and projections.
- 03Authentication and AuthorizationApply session, token, service identity, tenant, and object-level access controls.
- 04Asynchronous WorkOperate workers with leases, backoff, DLQs, backpressure, and safe deploys.
- 05Retry-Safe EffectsMake requests, webhooks, jobs, model calls, and billing safe under replay.
- 06Backend ReliabilityUse logs, metrics, traces, SLOs, alerts, and incident practice to operate services.