Class Information
Time: Tuesdays, 5:15 PM - 6:45 PM
Location: Towne 337
Semester: Spring 2026
Description
Welcome to CIS-1990! In this course, you will learn how to practically instantiate and apply LLMs by designing intelligent, interactive agents. Moving beyond basic prompting, this course explores the full lifecycle of building LLM-powered applications, from reasoning and planning to extending capabilities with memory, retrieval, and tool integration. Through hands-on projects, you will learn techniques such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and multi-step agent design, while also addressing reliability and safety by diagnosing failure modes, implementing guardrails, and conducting systematic evaluations. The course culminates in a final project where you build and present your own LLM agent. Python proficiency is required, but no prior machine learning background is assumed.
Important Links
Course Schedule
| Week | Date | Lecture Topic | Homework |
|---|---|---|---|
| Module 1: Interacting with LLMs | |||
| 1 | Jan 20 | What is an LLM? A brief history of language modeling | HW 1 Released |
| 2 | Jan 27 | LLM architectures and training | |
| 3 | Feb 3 | How does an LLM generate text? | HW 1 Due HW 2 Released |
| 4 | Feb 10 | Prompt engineering, reasoning techniques and memory management | |
| 5 | Feb 17 | RAG and human-in-the-loop | HW 2 Due HW 3 Released |
| Module 2: Building an LLM Agent | |||
| 6 | Feb 24 | Prompt chaining, planning, and routing | |
| 7 | Mar 3 | Calling external tools & prompting frameworks | HW 3 Due Final Project Released |
| - | Mar 10 | Spring Break - No Class | |
| 8 | Mar 17 | Exception handling, guardrails, and safety patterns | |
| 9 | Mar 24 | Vibe coding | Project Proposal Due |
| 10 | Mar 31 | Evaluating Agents | |
| Module 3: LLM Agents in the real world | |||
| 11 | Apr 7 | Guest Lectures: Open problems with LLM agents | |
| 12 | Apr 14 | Guest Lectures: Deploying LLM agents in industry | |
| 13 | Apr 21 | Final Project presentations - Part 1 | Final Project Due |
| 14 | Apr 28 | Final Project presentations - Part 2 | |
Assignments & Grading
Assignments are due at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Every student has 3 late days that may be used at their discretion across the semester; beyond this allowance, late work will not be accepted. Grades will be 45% homeworks, 45% final project, and 10% participation. Participation will be judged by attendance and engagement in class activities.
Course Staff
