We train AI builder consultants.
An AI builder can build things for themselves. An AI builder consultant builds something for someone else, which adds judgment, ownership of the outcome, communication, and collaboration to the work. Two toolkits describe that person.
The Builder and the Consultant
The Builder
What you can make.
- Discovery
- What to build, for whom, and whether you should.
- Design
- The surface and the flow.
- Application Architecture
- How it is structured, shipped, and kept safe.
- AI Systems
- How the models work, and why they behave the way they do.
- Agentic Workflow
- Putting AI to work, as the way you build and inside the product you build.
- Launch and Learn
- How people find it, and whether it worked.
Students rate themselves on all six at the start of the fall semester and again in December, and get their own profile back both times.
The Consultant
What changes when the work belongs to someone else.
- Judgment
- Solving the right problem, and saying what the facts support.
- Ownership
- Driving the work forward.
- Communication
- Whether people understand the work: the updates, decks, and memos written for a reader.
- Collaboration
- Whether teammates and clients trust you, and want you on the next engagement.
Two axes are about the work and two are about people. Students do not rate themselves here: the faculty advisor, teammates, and clients rate observed behavior at midterm and at the end of each term.
Two classes, then real clients.
1. Build
You are the customer. Students learn the six Builder skills by building their own product with AI coding agents, two weeks per skill. Each week we teach a technique and students apply it to their project.
- MSB 341 · IS 693R · CS 498R
- Mondays, fall and winter
2. The Foundry Lab
You are the vendor. Class time is delivery: problem solving and collaboration on live client engagements. The Lab teaches the Consultant toolkit and tests the Builder toolkit.
- MBA 693R · STRAT 490R
- Fridays, 8:00 to 11:50 AM
3. Client engagements
Organizations hire the Foundry for five-week engagements staffed by one or two builders. The client runs the software, and it ships under the students' names.
- Five weeks, extendable
- Faculty oversight on every engagement
Teams cover the toolkit together
Nobody arrives strong on all ten axes. Teams are staffed so the team covers every Builder axis, even when no single member does.
Responsibility follows what you have shipped
A student's record decides what they own on a team: shadowing a project, contributing a piece under supervision, or owning a workstream the client sees their name on.
First principles over tools
We teach the building blocks of AI software and how they combine. The tools change every few months; the building blocks change slowly.
Other people rate the consultant
Students assess their own Builder skills. Judgment, ownership, communication, and collaboration are rated by the people who worked with them, including the client.
What this means for your project.
Your team is rated on judgment, ownership, communication, and collaboration, and part of that rating comes from you.
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