397 AI Concepts for SRE & DevOps

PHASE 1

FOUNDATIONS

Start before LLMs. Understand where AI, ML and neural networks fit.

AI Narrow AI Generative AI Predictive AI Machine Learning Supervised Learning Unsupervised Learning Reinforcement Learning Deep Learning Model Dataset Feature Label Training Training Set Validation Set Test Set Prediction Classification Regression Neural Network Neuron Layer Weight Bias Parameter Parameter Loss Loss Function Gradient Gradient Descent Backpropagation Epoch Batch Learning Rate Overfitting Underfitting

PHASE 2

TRANSFORMERS & LLMs

Follow text from characters to tokens, attention, transformers and generation.

PHASE 3

PROMPTS & APIs

Understand how applications send instructions to models and handle production API behavior.

PHASE 4

KNOWLEDGE, EMBEDDINGS & RAG

Teach models to look up relevant information before answering.

PHASE 5

TOOLS, AGENTS & ORCHESTRATION

Move from a model that talks to a system that can inspect and act.

PHASE 6

FRAMEWORKS & MCP

Understand the names you will hear when teams build agentic systems.

PHASE 7

MODEL ADAPTATION

Know when to prompt, retrieve, fine-tune or compress a model.

Fine-Tuning Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT)Instruction Tuning Preference Tuning RLHF DPO LoRA QLoRA PEFT Adapter RAG vs Fine-Tuning

PHASE 8

EVALS & OBSERVABILITY

Measure whether the AI is good and trace where it fails.

PHASE 9

LLMOPS & AI INFRASTRUCTURE

Operate AI like production: serving, GPUs, latency, capacity, routing and reliability.

PHASE 10

RELIABILITY & SRE

Apply familiar SRE thinking to AI dependencies and workflows.

PHASE 11

AI SECURITY

Understand how untrusted text, tools and autonomy create new attack paths.

PHASE 12

AI INCIDENTS & COST

Recognize the failure modes an AI SRE will actually troubleshoot.

PHASE 13

PRODUCTION ARCHITECTURE

Connect every term into systems you can design and operate.

Basic AI Application RAG Application Tool-Using Assistant Agentic Application Enterprise AI Platform AI Gateway + RAG + Agent Production Readiness Review AI SRE Final Mental Model

397 concepts.Nothing important skipped.