Week 1 | Foundations & Planning

Learn how AI-powered teams plan and scope real products, then lock in a clear, buildable capstone idea.

AI-Powered Software Development Workflow

•     How modern startups build software with AI, end to end

•     Overview of the toolchain: Claude, AI coding agents, and where each fits in the lifecycle

•     Setting up your dev environment and AI tools for the program

Requirement Analysis

•     Discovering needs and writing user stories

•     Functional vs. non-functional requirements

•     Using AI to interrogate and stress-test a product idea

•     Turning requirements into an MVP feature list

AI Prompt Engineering

•     Prompt anatomy: role, context, constraints, output format

•     Few-shot examples and chain-of-thought prompting

•     Building reusable prompt templates for dev tasks

AI / Tools: Claude, ChatGPT, Notion / Miro

Week Deliverable: A one-page Product Requirements Document (PRD) and a validated capstone project idea

Week 2 | Design & Data

Turn requirements into an interface users can click through and a database that holds up under real use.

UI Generation with AI

•     Wireframing from requirements

•     AI-assisted UI generation (Claude Artifacts, v0)

•     Component-based design and responsive layout

•     Refining AI-generated UI for consistency and usability

Database Design

•     Entity-relationship modelling and normalization

•     Choosing SQL vs. NoSQL for your capstone

•     AI-assisted schema generation

•     Seed data for local development

AI / Tools: Claude Artifacts, v0, Figma, PostgreSQL / MongoDB, dbdiagram.io

Week Deliverable: A clickable UI prototype and a finalized database schema for the capstone

Week 3 | Build

Wire up a real backend and frontend, using AI as a coding partner rather than a search engine.

API & Backend Development

•     REST API design principles

•     Authentication and input validation basics

•     AI-assisted endpoint scaffolding and error handling

Frontend Development

•     Connecting the AI-generated UI to live data

•     State management and API integration

•     Responsive polish and basic accessibility

AI-Assisted Coding Practice

•     Working with AI coding agents on real features

•     Task decomposition: breaking features into AI-sized steps

•     Reviewing and refactoring AI-written code

AI / Tools: Node.js / Express or FastAPI, Claude Code, Postman, Git

Week Deliverable: A working full-stack application: frontend, backend, and database connected end-to-end

Week 4 | Ship

Catch the bugs, tighten the rough edges, and present a finished product with confidence.

AI-Assisted Testing & Debugging

•     Writing quick unit and integration tests with AI assistance

•     Debugging strategies for AI-written code

•     Finding and fixing edge cases before demo day

Capstone Finalization

•     Polishing UI/UX rough edges

•     Preparing a short walkthrough of your build decisions

•     Final review and mentor feedback

Demo Day & Certification

•     Live capstone presentations

•     Peer and mentor feedback

•     Certificate of Completion awarded

AI / Tools: Jest / Pytest, Claude