The FDE Coach blog · new articles every day
Practical guides for engineers who ship AI.
Step-by-step builds with free AI tools, what just shipped in AI and why it matters, and Forward Deployed Engineer playbooks on interviews, pay and client work.
Step-by-step builds using free AI tools & LLMs.
LatestBuild Guides
Build a WhatsApp Support Agent With Your Docs Using n8n, Supabase & Gemini
Deploy a free-tier WhatsApp customer-support agent that answers questions from your own documentation. This step-by-step guide uses n8n, Supabase vector, and Gemini to build a RAG pipeline you control.
12 min read
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Build Guides
Build a Cold Outreach Email Personalizer From a CSV Using OpenRouter Free Models
Build a Python script that reads a prospect CSV, scrapes company context with Firecrawl, and drafts personalized cold emails using OpenRouter's free models. Full implementation guide.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Free Discord FAQ Bot with RAG Using n8n, Pinecone & Gemini
Deploy a production-grade Discord FAQ bot that performs Retrieval-Augmented Generation over your docs. Step-by-step guide using free-tier tools: n8n, Pinecone, and Gemini API.
11 min read
Build Guides
Convert Screenshots to Frontend Code Using Gemini 1.5 Flash Free Vision Model
Build a zero-cost pipeline that turns UI screenshots into runnable HTML/CSS/JS replicas. Uses Google Gemini 1.5 Flash free tier for vision and Playwright for instant validation.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Resume Tailoring Agent with Groq and Llama 3 (Free Tier)
Engineer an agent that parses your base resume and a job description, then rewrites bullet points for maximum ATS keyword matching using Groq's free Llama 3 API and Streamlit.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Lead-Enrichment Agent That Scrapes Domains with Playwright & Gemini
Build a Python agent that scrapes company websites with Playwright and uses Google Gemini's free tier to auto-generate structured lead profiles from a list of domains.
8 min read
Build Guides
Build a Multi-Agent Research Assistant with OpenRouter and Playwright
Build a free-tier multi-agent research assistant that plans queries, searches the web, scrapes results, and writes structured briefs using OpenRouter, Playwright, and Python.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a GitHub Issue Triager Using Groq and Cloudflare Workers
Deploy a serverless GitHub App that auto-labels and routes new issues. Uses Llama 3 on Groq free tier and Cloudflare Workers to comment with triage summaries.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Discord FAQ Bot with Pinecone Free Tier & Gemini
Build a Discord bot that ingests your docs into Pinecone’s free vector DB and answers questions with sourced replies using Google Gemini’s free API. Full Python code, step-by-step.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Job-Application Autofill Browser Extension with Local LLM
Build a Chrome extension that parses job descriptions and autofills forms using your resume, powered entirely by a local Ollama Llama 3 model for zero-cost, private inference.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build an On-Call Incident Summarizer That Drafts Postmortems from Logs
Engineer an AI agent using Python, FastAPI, and the Gemini free tier to ingest raw error logs, auto-summarize incidents, identify root causes, and draft structured postmortems.
10 min read
Build Guides
Deploy a Free GitHub PR Review Bot Using Cloudflare Workers AI
Build a zero-cost bot that auto-reviews pull requests for bugs, logic, and style using Llama 3 8B on Cloudflare Workers AI free tier. Full code, architecture, and pitfalls included.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a SQL Analyst Agent That Answers Questions Over Postgres with Groq
Build a natural language SQL agent using Groq's free Llama-3 70B API, Supabase Postgres, and Streamlit. A hands-on guide with full code to query databases in plain English.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Multi-Agent Research Assistant with LangGraph & Groq Free Tier
Ship a LangGraph agent swarm that plans research queries, searches the web with Tavily, and synthesizes a fully cited brief—all on free-tier LLMs and tools.
9 min read
Build Guides
Build a Gmail Triage Agent That Labels, Prioritizes, and Drafts Replies with Gemini
Build a zero-cost Gmail triage agent using Google Apps Script and Gemini Flash API. Auto-label, prioritize, and draft replies directly in your inbox.
9 min read
Build Guides
Deploy a Free GitHub PR Review Bot with Gemini Flash & Actions
Ship an AI code reviewer that catches bugs, style violations, and security flaws on every pull request. Uses Google Gemini Flash free tier, GitHub Actions, and Octokit—zero cost, full automation.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Resume Tailoring Agent with Hugging Face Free Inference & Streamlit
Engineer an AI agent that rewrites your CV bullet points for each job description using Mistral 7B on the Hugging Face free tier. Full Python/Streamlit build guide with copy-pasteable code.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build an AI Cron Job: RSS to Personalized Morning Newsletter
Build a free, scheduled AI pipeline that fetches RSS feeds, filters items by your topics, summarizes them with Groq, and emails a digest via Resend—all on Cloudflare Workers.
9 min read
Build Guides
Build a Terminal Voice Assistant with Open-Source Whisper, Piper TTS, and Groq
Engineer a hands-free CLI voice assistant using entirely free, open-source tooling. We wire up Whisper for STT, Groq's Llama 3 for reasoning, and Piper for TTS in a clean Python pipeline you can build this afternoon.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Personal Meeting Notetaker with Groq's Free Whisper & Llama 3
Build a local Python app that records system audio, transcribes it using Groq's free Whisper API, and extracts structured summaries with action items via Llama 3—all without paying a cent.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Personal Meeting Notetaker That Extracts Action Items for Free
Build an offline-first meeting notetaker using n8n, Whisper.cpp, and Groq's free tier. Transcribe calls locally, then extract summaries, decisions, and assigned action items automatically.
11 min read
Build Guides
Deploy a Free Competitor Site Monitor That Alerts on Meaningful Changes Only
Build a scheduled monitor using Playwright, Cloudflare Workers, Groq's free LLM, and Resend. It scrapes competitor pages, diffs the text, and emails you only the business-relevant changes.
10 min read
Build Guides
Categorize Bank CSV Exports Into Budgets Automatically with Groq Function Calling
Build a free Python script that ingests raw bank CSV exports, uses Groq’s Mixtral tool-use model to categorize transactions, and outputs a structured budget summary in seconds.
9 min read
Build Guides
Build a Multi-Agent Research Assistant with Gemini, Planning & Search
Build a free, multi-agent research assistant using Gemini, SerpAPI, LangChain, and Streamlit. One agent plans, another searches, and a third writes a cited brief—no paid tools.
11 min read
105 articles and counting