AI Architect — Companion Textbook
Not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Anthropic or any course, certification body, or AI vendor. See About these books.
This book is being written. The chapter list below is the planned structure; chapters fill in over time. Follow the changelog for updates.
This book is a plain-language companion for the AI Architect track — designing, integrating, governing, and defending AI systems across their full lifecycle.
An AI Architect is a technical leader who can design, integrate, govern, and defend AI-powered systems across their full lifecycle, from a first architecture sketch through production, compliance, and the people who have to trust it.
What this book covers
The Architect track has two levels.
Foundations — five competencies:
- Agentic architecture and orchestration
- Tool design and integration protocols
- AI coding-assistant configuration and workflows
- Prompt engineering and structured output
- Context management and reliability
Professional — seven competencies:
- Solution design and architecture
- Model selection, prompting, and context engineering
- Integration
- Evaluation, testing, and optimization
- Governance, safety, and risk management
- Stakeholder communication and lifecycle management
- Developer productivity and operational enablement
This is the capstone book. It assumes the material in AI Fundamentals, AI Associate, and AI Developer.
How chapters are structured
Plain explanation → worked example → "explain it back" → self-check → key terms.