What 100+ Case Studies Taught Us About LLM Development

Author(s): Towards AI Editorial Team

Originally published on Towards AI.

Good morning, AI enthusiasts!

When we launched Beginner to Advanced LLM Developer seven months ago, we built it for a simple reason: most devs didn’t have a reliable path to go from “I’ve built custom ChatGPT” to “I can build and ship production-grade AI systems.”

So we put everything into one place: prompting, RAG, fine-tuning, agents, tool use, local deployment — all in a flow that actually made sense.

No fluff. Just the real thing, start to finish.

Since then, two things have happened:

1. Over 100 projects, case studies, and developer conversations gave us clear insight into what works and what doesn’t.
2. The LLM landscape leveled up — reasoning models, multimodal APIs, fast local inference, and new fine-tuning paths.

And that meant we had to update the course, too.

Not just to keep it current, but to reflect everything that is relevant for “LLM development” in 2025, which you have access to for only $250 (equivalent to $4 an hour!).

👉 Preview the updated syllabus + start 10 lessons free →

What’s New (and Why We Think It Matters):

• Local-first development is real
• Prompting isn’t enough anymore
• You can fine-tune with way less data
• Your apps can see now
• Interoperability is the next big unlock

Also:

• More video walkthroughs
• Updated lessons throughout
• Cleaner structure for faster onboarding

Start learning with your free preview →

Still the Most Complete Path to LLM Development

You’ll still go from zero to deploying a certifiable Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) project.

You’ll still learn the full lifecycle in 90+ lessons: from prompts and data pipelines to tool use, fine-tuning, and deployment — all with production-grade tools like Python, OpenAI, Gemini, Llama 3, LangChain, Hugging Face, Anthropic MCP, and more.

The difference?

You’ll be equipped for what the LLM stack looks like now, not last year.

A Quick Word on the June Cohort

Also, a reminder that our June cohort kicks off on the 1st (Just 6 days to go) — a way to build alongside other devs and founders shipping in real time.

It’s not a boot camp. It’s a kick-off call with our CEO to help answer your most pressing questions, gut-check ideas, and share progress.

If you’ve got momentum (or want to get it back), this is where we build together.

Join the June cohort and build with others who are shipping fast →

Start for Free — Then Decide

The first 10 lessons (and one full code notebook) are completely free.

You’ll know within the first hour if this is the path you want to take.

If you do go all-in, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. So really, the only decision you’re making today is whether or not you want to try.

We made sure the answer to that one is easy.

Start Learning Free →

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Published via Towards AI