Course 2 Supplement — Content & Information Systems

Systems Thinking in the AI Era II

This repository contains the discovery labs and challenge templates for Course 2: Content & Information Systems.

What's in here

course2-supplement/
├── building_blocks/        Shared building block reference implementations
│   ├── building_blocks.py  Service, Worker, FileStore, KeyValueStore, Queue,
│   │                       RelationalDB, VectorDB (the 7 universal building blocks)
│   └── external_entities.py  User, External Service, Time
│
├── labs/course2/           Hands-on discovery labs
│   ├── lab1_service_file_store.py   Service + File Store — Media Handling
│   └── lab2_service_kvs.py          Service + Key-Value Store — Caching
│
└── challenges/course2/     Technical Design Document templates
    ├── part1-mvp-foundation.md          Challenge Part 1 template
    ├── part2-viral-content-crisis.md    Challenge Part 2 template
    └── part3-ai-personalization.md      Challenge Part 3 template

Quick start

You need Python 3.8 or higher. No third-party packages are required — the labs use only the standard library.

git clone https://github.com/kayashaolu/course2-supplement.git
cd course2-supplement
python3 labs/course2/lab1_service_file_store.py   # Windows: use 'py -3' and backslash paths

Running the labs

Each lab is interactive and self-contained. You'll be guided through four progressive experiments with reflection questions and educational feedback after each one.

Lab 1 — Service + File Store (Media Handling)

python3 labs/course2/lab1_service_file_store.py

Four experiments build deep intuition for handling user-uploaded media:

1. Naive storage — photos as BLOBs in a Relational Database (feel the pain)
2. Service + File Store split — bytes in File Store, metadata in DB (feel the relief)
3. Media processing pipeline — Queue + Worker for async thumbnail generation
4. CDN integration — edge caching for global delivery

# Run a single experiment directly
python3 labs/course2/lab1_service_file_store.py 2

# Skip the typewriter effect (faster runs)
python3 labs/course2/lab1_service_file_store.py --instant

Lab 2 — Service + Key-Value Store (Caching)

python3 labs/course2/lab2_service_kvs.py

Four experiments build deep intuition for caching:

1. Database-only reads — feel the bottleneck under repeat traffic
2. Cache-aside pattern — watch hit rates climb and DB load collapse
3. Invalidation strategies — TTL vs write-through, with real stale data
4. Thundering herd — simulate the production nightmare, then fix it with coalescing

# Run a single experiment directly
python3 labs/course2/lab2_service_kvs.py 4

# Skip the typewriter effect (faster runs)
python3 labs/course2/lab2_service_kvs.py --instant

Challenge templates

The three Technical Design Document templates in challenges/course2/ are scaffolds for the Course 2 Capstone Challenge — designing a news aggregation platform.

• Part 1: MVP Foundation — 5 requirements, design the core platform
• Part 2: Viral Content Crisis — evolve to handle 100x traffic spikes
• Part 3: AI Personalization — layer in semantic search and personalized feeds

Download the template you're working on, fill in each section using building block names (Service, Queue, Worker, Key-Value Store, File Store, Relational Database, Vector Database, External Service), and submit through the challenge form on the course site.

Building block language

These labs and challenges teach you to think in building blocks rather than specific technologies. Use names like Key-Value Store instead of Redis, File Store instead of S3, External Service instead of OpenAI API. The pattern is what matters; technology is implementation.

Course site

Full course at systemthinkinglab.ai/course-2.

License

See LICENSE.