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AI Engineering Field Kit

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AI Engineering Field Kit

Twelve guided days for new AI engineers and field engineers. Start with one model reply, then learn how to serve, test, improve and recommend a real system. Fireworks is one of the hands-on platforms used in the labs.

Start Day 1

0 of 12 days done. Your progress is saved on this device.

How a day works

Section titled “How a day works”

  1. Overview · 2 min

    What today is for

    The goal, what you need first, and what you will have at the end.

  2. One to three steps

    Watch, do, check, explain

    The video plays inside the step. Then run the lab, check your result and explain what it means.

  3. Wrap-up · 10 min

    Drill and record your numbers

    Answer the day’s questions out loud and note your numbers, then on to the next day.

Your laptop runs the code. Your phone is for the videos and the practice.

Your 12 days

Section titled “Your 12 days”

About 20 h in all. Days 7 and 9 are long.

  1. Day 1 Guardrails and first calls Put a spending cap in place, then time how fast models reply 1 h 25 · $0.02
  2. Day 2 Local stack on the Mac Run one model three ways on your Mac, then compare them 45 min · free
  3. Day 3 Benchmark like a field engineer Find how many people one server handles before everyone starts waiting 1 h · free
  4. Day 4 Memory levers See why models that fit run out of memory, then fix it 1 h 50 · free
  5. Day 5 Agent workloads Reuse a repeated opening prompt to answer faster and pay less 45 min · $0.03
  6. Day 6 Structured output and batch Check replies are well-formed, then run bulk jobs at half price 1 h 05 · $0.03
  7. Day 7 Training day, managed Score models on real tasks, then train a custom one on Fireworks 3 h 10 · $5
  8. Day 8 Training day, local Retrain Day 7’s model on your Mac, then compare with the cloud 1 h 35 · free
  9. Day 9 Scale-out See why huge models can run fast, and when draft models help 1 h 40 · half a GPU-hour
  10. Day 10 Capstone and rehearsal Turn your measurements into a customer recommendation and a ten-minute talk 2 h 40 · free
  11. Day 11 Training methods in miniature Train a whole model, then small add-ons, and compare the costs 1 h 45 · free · Part 2
  12. Day 12 Preference tuning Teach a model to prefer better answers without losing correctness 1 h 55 · free (Fireworks DPO optional, paid) · Part 2

What you need

Section titled “What you need”
  • An Apple-silicon Mac (the examples use one with 36 GB).
  • Disk for model downloads: about 4.9 GB on Day 1, 17 GB on Day 4 and 14 GB on Day 9.
  • A Fireworks account with a payment method, for the steps marked $. Day 1 sets a spend cap first.
  • A DGX Spark, only for the optional Day 9 · Step 3.
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