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Learn how to use, understand, and stress-test AI from an adversarial developer perspective—so you’re not dependent on opaque platforms or “magic.” You’ll build real intuition for how AI works in practice (models, providers, and tooling), then learn how to leverage AI for development work without leaking your code, prompts, or sensitive context. This course is about practical, privacy-first AI engineering: Run local LLMs and local/hosted coding agents Understand the backend (models, context windows, inference, limitations) and the provider layer (what gets logged, where data can leak, risk tradeoffs) Ship simple, scalable AI apps with clean architecture (no slop allowed) Apply an adversarial mindset: threat modeling, prompt-injection awareness, secure workflows, and review/hardening Prereqs: - basic English (or translation tools) - basic coding/app dev (or the drive to learn) By the end, you’ll have a repeatable, secure workflow for building with AI.

Welcome to the PlebDevs starter course! I'm Austin, the founder of PlebDevs, and I'm here to guide you through your journey from complete beginner to capable developer. This course is specifically designed for those new to coding, though we have plenty of intermediate and advanced content available on the platform for when you're ready to level up. In this starter course we cover: 1. Setting up your Code Editor, 2. Git / Github 3. HTML 4. CSS 5. JavaScript. Starter Course Objectives: 1. Provide an easy-to-follow overview of the developer journey 2. Get you comfortable in a development environment 3. Give you hands-on experience with core programming languages 4. Get you setup for the PlebDevs Frontend & Backend Courses and the rest of the content on the platform.

Welcome to the PlebDevs Course #2! This is the place to come and learn how to build your first lightning app backend! In this comprehensive and beginner-friendly 13-lesson course, we'll transform you from a JavaScript n00b into a proficient backend developer, with a special focus on Lightning App Development. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN: - NodeJS - Building a Server / API with Express - Building user Authentication & Authorization with JWT's - Setting up a local Lightning Development Environment - Building with Lightning using LND - Integrating your Lightning node with your server - SQL & Database fundamentals - Database Development with Knex - Integrating your server with a Frontend App - Deploying your Server, Database, Lightning Node, and Frontend App Building on the foundation laid in our first course, where we introduced you to the basics of Frontend development and the integration of a custodial LNBits wallet, this 13-lesson journey is designed to take your skills to the next level. We're diving deep into backend development, giving you the tools and knowledge to construct a robust server for the original frontend app from Course #1. Even if you haven't taken the first course, don't worry! We've got you covered. This course is structured to be inclusive and comprehensive, enabling you to build a generic Lightning Wallet backend that seamlessly connects to a prebuilt frontend. It's a perfect stepping stone for those looking to expand their JavaScript proficiency into the realms of backend development, specifically tailored for Lightning App Development.

Welcome to the PlebDevs Course. This is your one-stop shop to learn how to build your first lightning app! We'll take you from an absolute beginner to a capable frontend developer focusing on Bitcoin/lightning projects in under 6 hours. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN: HTML5, CSS, Javascript, DOM Manipulation, API calls, React, Lightning wallet basics with LNbits, Github / Git fundamentals, Visual Script Studio, Vercel Learning how to code and build apps is a long and difficult journey which is why our instructors, Super Testnet and Austin have put together the first part of the Plebdev Course to condense all of the fundamentals of Frontend development and accelerate your path toward developing apps on your own. We want to encourage more developers to get their start by building on Bitcoin and Lightning and welcome them to the thriving Bitcoin developer ecosystem! Our instructors have built cutting-edge projects on Bitcoin and Lightning. Both do workshops inside of PlebLab, and both learned how to code from ZERO without prior experience. Using our exciting, hands-on teaching style, you are sure to master the principles AND have fun at the same time!

Learn to run your goose agent with local AI models powered by ollama

SearXNG is a self-hosted metasearch engine that lets you run private web search on your own machine. For local AI workflows, it pairs especially well with coding agents and local model hosts because it exposes a simple JSON search API.

Learn to run your opencode coding agent with local AI models powered by ollama

This is a single consolidated guide for running local models with Ollama and connecting tools and agents (especially Goose) to your local Ollama server. It merges the core Desktop, CLI, and Goose workflows into one practical "happy path + operations" reference.

Lesson 8 in the PlebDevs Adversarial AI Course - COMING SOON

Lesson 7 in the PlebDevs Adversarial AI Course - COMING SOON

Lesson 6 in the PlebDevs Adversarial AI Course - COMING SOON

This lesson shows you how to kick off a new project with clear documentation, better planning, and a workflow that works well with AI tools.

Learn about how to choose your software techstack and approach a new project from zero when building with AI leveraging the PlebDevs "AI Guides" and "Freedom Tech" repos

Lesson 3 shifts from AI concepts into AI interfaces and local agents: what an AI agent actually is, how to choose the right interface for the job, and how tools, providers, memory, and privacy all change depending on where and how you use AI. We’ll compare UI, IDE, CLI, API, task-runner, and automation workflows, then walk through practical local-first options so you can use AI more powerfully without blindly handing your data to the cloud.

Lesson 2 continues our intro to AI from the backend this time with a focus on AI model providers: - What is an AI provider? - What are their business models and incentives? - How to evaluate and vet providers? - How to be your own provider? These questions and many more will be explored in lesson 2!

Lesson 1 is a practical intro to AI from the backend: what an AI model is, how to evaluate models (params, open vs closed, context window, speed/cost), and how to run LLMs locally—starting with Ollama

High level intro and overview and framing for the course

Build a Lightning Wallet in just about 20 mins leveraging the FREE Voltage MutinyNet Lightning Node's to make it easier than ever to build on Bitcoin & Lightning and make REAL payments on a REAL network.

Learn about the basics of NWC from legendary Nostr Developer and Plebdev @gudnuf

Cashu is an implementation of Chaumian Ecash that allows users to mint ecash in exchange for bitcoin. In this piece of PlebDevs theory we go through the history of digital cash, dive into the Cashu spec, and finally get our hands dirty with Nutshell's Cashu wallet. Link to the slides is here: https://tinyurl.com/cashu-nuts

High level tips and framework for working towards landing your first software developer position

In the previous lesson, we created the structure of our webpage with HTML. Now, we'll learn how to style it using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). While HTML provides the bones of our webpage, CSS adds the visual presentation - the colors, layouts, spacing, and overall aesthetics.

In this lesson, we'll bring our web pages to life by adding dynamic functionality with JavaScript. We'll build a real-world application that displays and updates Bitcoin prices in real-time, teaching core JavaScript concepts along the way.

Intro to HTML (HyperText Markup Language) - the foundation of all webpages. Learn the basics of HTML and how to layout easy effective blocks of UI with this simple markdown language.

In this lesson, we'll establish one of the most important foundations of your development journey: version control with Git and GitHub. This knowledge will enable you to track your code, back it up in the cloud, and start building your developer portfolio.

In this lesson, we'll set up the most fundamental tool in your development journey: your code editor. This is where you'll spend most of your time writing, testing, and debugging code, so it's crucial to get comfortable with it from the start.

Welcome to the PlebDevs starter course! I'll be walking you through this short intro starter course that will get you up and running and interacting with the rest of the content on the platform. If you're here, I'm assuming you're new to coding or just starting out. If you already have experience and have your bearings down, there's lots more intermediate and advanced content on the platform. This course is designed for absolute beginners.

Let's review this famous block of Bitcoin Core consensus code and see what we can grok as plebdevs!

Now that everything is built, tested, and working, we can deploy our server, database, Lightning Node, and frontend App to production!

Integrate the Lightning Wallet backend we've been building into the pleb-wallet Frontend App

Learn to interact with your database through the API of your server

Learn how to setup a local database on your server end-to-end using the Knex library

Learn the basics of SQL and build a database schema for your Lightning wallet backend

Learn about the basics of databases, the different kinds of databases, how they work, and how to choose the right DB for your project.

Learn how to interface with LND to build out the Lightning functionality for your server

High level intro to Bitcoin's Lightning Network for App Developers

Learn the basics of user Authorization and Authentication with Express and JSON Web Tokens (JWT)

Learn the basics of using Middleware that runs on your API routes with express

Learn about building and handling multiple API routes for your server with Express

Learn the basics of building a server with the express library

Learn the basics of NodeJs as a foundation for server side development in JavaScript

PlebDevs Course II: Building a Lightning Wallet Backend

Build the final version of the pleb wallet app in React with Austin!

Learn the basics of React with Austin and prepare to rebuilt the Pleb Wallet in React!

Learn how to setup your dev environment, Git, Github, and creating a react app codebase with Austin!

Learn the Basics of JavaScript and LNBits with SuperTestnet!

Learn the basics of CSS with Austin and build / style a pleb wallet frontend

Learn the basics of HTML and write your first code with SuperTestnet!

Lesson 0 - Intro to PlebDevs Course I: Building a Lightning Wallet Frontend

This guide will walk you through setting up a React app manually, using Parcel as a bundler for its simplicity and efficiency.

A step-by-step walkthrough on how to setup and deploy a nodejs backend built with Express / Knex / SQLite (dev db) / Postgres (production db)

A simple fullstack Lightning App template for learning / development with LND

A Simple Lightning tipping app template built with NextJS and Voltage.

Rust Buster Cheatsheet made to help myself keep an index of syntax as I learn Rust

A simple index of the most common JS concepts and syntax!

We'll be learning about Lightning Login with LNURL-Auth and building a simple implementation ourselves in a NextJS app!

Come join another PlebDevs Workshop where we build our first Lightning App in a custom Lightning Replit environment that Austin built. This workshop was originally created for the BitBlockBoom 2023 Workshop Series. Link to slides: https://tinyurl.com/bbb-plebdevs

Learn how to build a simple Lightning Address server with NextJS and host it for free on Vercel ⚡️

Building a simple lightning node management dashboard with WebLN / Alby / LND / Polar

3 easy ways to connect to, and call methods on your LND node with JavaScript to build a simple NextJS Lightning Wallet!

Learn how to use the MutinyNet Bitcoin signet for developers on Voltage to setup and use a FREE and simple powerful Lightning dev environment

We'll learn how to setup and connect to Bitcoin core in regtest and write a script to create and fund wallets with NodeJS

We'll be going over the basics of the LNURL spec and implementing an LNURL Pay endpoint in NodeJS!