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Module 1 · Lesson 1

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What you will build, how Learn, Build, Remix works, and the AI SDK in 90 seconds.

Welcome. By the end of this course you will have a real AI app running on a public URL, built by you, ready to remix. This first lesson sets you up and gets a project running on your machine. No model calls yet, just a clean foundation to build on.

Learn: how this course works

Every lesson has three parts, and that order matters.

  • Learn is one idea, explained plainly. Just the why before the how.
  • Build is hands-on. You write code and run it. By the end of the section, something works.
  • Remix is where it becomes yours. A small change that forces you to actually understand what you built, not just copy it.

The remix is the point. Copy-paste teaches you nothing the moment you close the tab. Changing one thing on purpose is how it sticks.

A quick word on the SDK itself. The Vercel AI SDK is a small TypeScript library that gives you one consistent way to talk to language models. Instead of learning a different API for every provider, you learn one set of functions. We default to Claude models in this course, and near the end you will see how swapping to another provider is a one-line change. That consistency is the whole point.

Build: get a project running

Let's create a fresh Next.js app and add the SDK. Open your terminal and run:

npx create-next-app@latest my-ai-app
cd my-ai-app
npm install ai @ai-sdk/anthropic

Take the defaults when create-next-app asks. The ai package is the SDK core; @ai-sdk/anthropic is the provider that lets you call Claude models.

Next, give the app an API key. Create a file called .env.local in the project root:

# .env.local
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your-key-here

You can get a key from the Anthropic console. Keep this file private. It is already in .gitignore by default, so it will not be committed.

Now start the dev server:

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000. You should see the default Next.js page. That is it for now. You have a project that runs and a key the SDK can read. In the next lesson we make it talk to a model.

Prefer to start from a finished setup? The course also comes with a starter repo (you will get the link when you sign up for the free course). Either path works. Building it yourself once is worth the extra few minutes.

Remix: make it yours

Open app/page.tsx and change the visible heading to your project's name, something you would actually want to build. Save, and watch it update in the browser.

Small change, but it is now your app, not a tutorial's. When you finish the course, this is the project you will deploy and share.

Key takeaways

  • The SDK gives you one consistent way to call any model.
  • Every lesson is Learn, then Build, then Remix. The remix is where it sticks.
  • You now have a running Next.js project with the SDK installed and a key in place.