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Optimal Lab

AI Native

Build products where the model is the interface, and the output has a shape.

Start: Force valid JSON →6 live · 22 coming

Sessions

Go in order. Each session is one idea you can drag, step and break.

01AI features in products

2 live · 5 coming

The building blocks of an AI feature.

Already live in other tracks: Embeddings and similarity search

  1. Interactive

    Live

    Force valid JSON

    Turn a schema on and watch illegal tokens get refused.

    Open session →

  2. Interactive

    Live

    Call a tool, then answer

    Give the model a weather tool, then take it away and watch it guess.

    Open session →

  3. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Classification and routing

    Label a ticket, an email or a lead with a model instead of rules.

  4. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Extracting data from documents

    Turn invoices, resumes and contracts into clean fields.

  5. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Summarization that keeps the facts

    Shorter, without dropping or inventing details.

  6. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Writing and rewriting features

    Drafts, tone changes and translation inside your product.

  7. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Search that understands meaning

    Users type what they mean, not the exact words.

02AI user experience

2 live · 5 coming

Designing for a slow, sometimes wrong collaborator.

  1. Interactive

    Live

    Streaming UI and partial results

    Show the answer as it arrives, and handle half-finished output.

    Open session →

  2. Interactive

    Live

    Designing for slow responses

    Progress, skeletons and doing work before the user asks.

    Open session →

  3. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Showing sources and confidence

    Citations and uncertainty that help users decide what to trust.

  4. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Undo, edit and regenerate

    Keep the user in charge of what the AI changes.

  5. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Chat vs embedded AI

    A chat box, or AI built into buttons and forms people already use.

  6. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Copilots and inline suggestions

    Suggest in place and let the user accept, edit or ignore.

  7. Interactive

    Coming soon

    When the model is wrong

    Fail in ways users notice and can recover from.

03Shipping AI features

2 live · 4 coming

From a demo to something people rely on.

Already live in other tracks: Evals: is the new prompt better?

  1. Interactive

    Coming soon

    From prototype to production

    What breaks between a great demo and real traffic.

  2. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Evals for one feature

    A small test set per feature, run on every prompt change.

  3. Interactive

    Live

    Cost per feature and per user

    Price an AI feature before it surprises the bill.

    Open session →

  4. Interactive

    Live

    A/B testing AI features

    Compare prompts or models on real users safely.

    Open session →

  5. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Collecting user feedback

    Thumbs, edits and abandons as signals for the next version.

  6. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Upgrading the model under a live feature

    Switch models without changing what users get.

04AI in your development workflow

0 live · 4 coming

Building software with AI as a teammate.

Already live in other tracks: A coding agent's loop

  1. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Pair programming with AI

    Where AI speeds you up, and where it quietly slows you down.

  2. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Writing specs for agents

    Describe the task so an agent can finish it without guessing.

  3. Interactive

    Coming soon

    AI code review

    Let a model review pull requests, and check its findings.

  4. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Generating tests with AI

    Useful tests, not ones that only confirm the code as written.

05Case studies: build an AI feature

0 live · 4 coming

One feature, end to end.

  1. Interactive

    Coming soon

    A support reply assistant

    Draft replies from your help docs, with sources and an approve button.

  2. Interactive

    Coming soon

    An invoice extractor

    PDF in, validated JSON out, with low-confidence fields flagged.

  3. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Meeting notes and action items

    Transcribe, summarize and assign follow-ups.

  4. Interactive

    Coming soon

    Smart search for your product

    Meaning-based search with filters and fallbacks.

In production

Tools you can use

20 technologies across 6 live sessions. Same names in any language — pick a session to see how the idea maps to the real world.

Services, platforms, protocols and standards — not one stack.

Roadmap

Coming soon

A step-by-step path through the track, with sessions and practice at each stage.

  1. Stage 1

    AI features in products

  2. Stage 2

    AI user experience

  3. Stage 3

    Shipping and measuring

  4. Stage 4

    AI in your own workflow

Projects

Coming soon

Build something real to lock in the skill.

  • A support reply that only returns JSON
  • An agent with two tools
  • An eval set of 20 questions