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.
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Build Guides
Build a Local Codebase Q&A Tool with Ollama, LlamaIndex, and Qdrant Free Tier
Index any local git repo into Qdrant's free cloud tier and query its architecture with a local Ollama model. A complete Python CLI build guide for engineers.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Slack Channel Digest Bot Using Cloudflare Workers AI Free Tier
Build a cron-driven Slack digest bot that fetches yesterday's messages, summarizes them with Cloudflare Workers AI free tier, and posts the recap. Complete step-by-step with code.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Free, Offline Voice Assistant for Your Terminal with Whisper, Ollama, and Piper
Wire up a fully local voice assistant in your terminal using open-source STT, LLM, and TTS models. Zero API costs, complete Python code, and a clean event loop architecture.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Free Job Autofill Extension with Groq and Playwright
Build a Chrome extension that reads your resume PDF and uses Groq's free Llama-3 model to autofill Greenhouse and Lever job apps. Real code, zero cost.
10 min read
Build Guides
Ship a WhatsApp Support Bot Backed by Your Docs Using Twilio & Groq
Build a free WhatsApp customer-support agent that answers questions from your own docs. Uses Twilio Sandbox, Groq's fast Llama inference, and a local Qdrant vector store.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Codebase Q&A Tool That Answers Questions in Natural Language
Index any GitHub repo with Supabase pgvector and LlamaIndex, then query it in plain English. Free-tier stack, real code, zero fluff.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Slack Digest Bot That Summarizes Every Channel's Key Discussions Each Morning
Ship a serverless morning digest bot using Cloudflare Workers, Groq's free Llama 3, and Slack Bolt. Summarize yesterday's key themes and decisions across channels automatically.
9 min read
Build Guides
Build a Calendar Negotiation Agent That Schedules Meetings Over Email Using Groq and n8n
Build a free-tier AI agent that reads your emails, extracts scheduling intent with Groq's Mixtral, and negotiates meeting times via Google Calendar—all in n8n with zero code.
12 min read
Build Guides
Build an On-Call Incident Summarizer from Logs with Groq and Playwright
Scrape monitoring dashboards and logs, then draft postmortems using Groq's fast, free Llama 3 70B. A hands-on Python guide to automating incident response summaries.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Cold Outreach Email Personalizer from a CSV of Prospects
Scrape LinkedIn or company news and generate deeply personalized opening lines using Groq's free tier and Python. A step-by-step guide for engineers who want to automate cold outreach at scale without paying for enrichment APIs.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Notion Knowledge Assistant That Answers Questions from Your Workspace
Build a free RAG pipeline that syncs your Notion workspace, embeds pages into Supabase pgvector, and lets you chat with your second brain using Groq's Mixtral 8x7B.
8 min read
Build Guides
Build a Gmail AI Triage Agent That Drafts Replies Using Gemini and Groq
Engineer an AI agent inside Gmail that reads new emails, assigns priority labels, and drafts context-aware replies using Gemini and Groq—all on free-tier APIs with zero infrastructure cost.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Viral Thread Writer: Turn Rough Outlines into Hooks with Gemini
Ship a Streamlit tool that transforms bullet-point outlines into formatted, hook-driven Twitter/X threads using the Gemini API free tier. Full Python code, no cost.
12 min read
Build Guides
Build a Daily Standup Bot with n8n and Gemini (Free Tier)
Build a cron-driven standup bot that DMs teammates, collects updates via n8n webhook, summarizes with Google Gemini free tier, and posts to Slack—all without a single paid service.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Flashcard Generator from Lecture Audio Using Whisper + Gemini
Turn any lecture recording into Anki flashcards with free-tier tools. We pipe audio through OpenAI Whisper for transcription, then use Google Gemini to extract Q&A pairs and output a study-ready CSV.
9 min read
Build Guides
Build a GitHub PR Review Bot with Gemini 1.5 Flash Logic & Style Checks
Ship an AI code reviewer that comments on logic flaws and style violations on every pull request. Uses Gemini 1.5 Flash free tier, GitHub Actions, and context caching—zero cost to run.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build an Invoice Extractor: Turn PDF Receipts into JSON with Gemini Free Tier
Extract line items, vendor info, and totals from scanned receipts using Google Gemini's free vision tier. Full Python pipeline with PDF-to-image conversion and structured JSON output.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Natural Language SQL Analyst Over Postgres Using Groq and Llama 3
Build a free, local AI analyst that turns plain English into SQL, runs it against your Supabase Postgres instance, and explains the results using Llama 3 and Groq.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Discord FAQ Bot That Answers From Your Docs (Supabase + OpenRouter)
Deploy a free-tier Discord bot that ingests your docs into Supabase pgvector, retrieves relevant chunks on /faq, and synthesizes answers with a free OpenRouter LLM. Full code included.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Resume Tailoring Agent That Rewrites Your CV for Any JD Using Gemini’s Free Tier
Build a Python agent that scrapes any job description URL and uses Google Gemini's free API to rewrite your Markdown resume, matching keywords and generating a tailored PDF. Free-tier, zero-cost, and production-ready.
11 min read
Build Guides
Build a Smart Clipboard: Summarize & Translate Anything You Copy with Ollama
Build a local Python daemon that watches your clipboard, then uses free Ollama models like Llama 3.2 to summarize, translate, or rephrase any text on demand. No cloud, no API keys.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build an On-Call Incident Summarizer with Gemini's Free Tier
Stop dreading postmortems. Build a Python tool that ingests structured logs and Slack threads, then uses Google Gemini's free API to auto-draft a root cause analysis and polished markdown report.
9 min read
Build Guides
Build a Personal Meeting Notetaker That Transcribes and Summarizes Calls
Build a local tool that records system audio, transcribes with OpenAI Whisper, and uses Groq's LLM to output structured summaries with action items—all free.
10 min read
Build Guides
Build a Local Codebase Q&A Tool with Ollama, LlamaIndex & ChromaDB
Index any local repo and ask architecture or debugging questions using a fully local, free LLM stack. A step-by-step guide with Python code, pitfalls, and extensions.
9 min read
105 articles and counting