invest in AI capability now. it compounds.
engineering mastery for the AI era.
AI writes code. you architect systems. deep technical courses and build-along projects for engineers who want to stay valuable as the job shifts under our feet.
free preview lesson on every course. no credit card.
why karnstack
AI can write code. what it can’t do is understand how the whole system fits together -- how services connect, where failures cascade, why one tradeoff matters more than another. that’s systems thinking, and it’s the skill that compounds fastest right now.
the engineers who thrive with AI aren’t the ones writing more code. they’re the ones who know what to ask for and can review what comes back with the judgment that only comes from fundamentals.
karnstack is a small catalog of deep technical courses for that kind of engineer. every course is first-principles, long-form, and dense on purpose. no bootcamp filler, no summaries of summaries.
why karnstack
AI can write code. what it can’t do is understand how the whole system fits together -- how services connect, where failures cascade, why one tradeoff matters more than another. that’s systems thinking, and it’s the skill that compounds fastest right now.
the engineers who thrive with AI aren’t the ones writing more code. they’re the ones who know what to ask for and can review what comes back with the judgment that only comes from fundamentals.
karnstack is a small catalog of deep technical courses for that kind of engineer. every course is first-principles, long-form, and dense on purpose. no bootcamp filler, no summaries of summaries.
trusted by engineers at
courses
9 coursesdistributed systems in a day
AI writes code. you architect systems. 24 lessons across 6 modules, first principles, no hand-waving.
papers every engineer should know
15 classic and modern papers that shaped how we build software, walked through one at a time. close-read, no summaries.
data structures & algorithms (foundations)
the 80% every engineer needs, from first principles. complexity, the memory hierarchy, the core structures, and the algorithms built on each. part 1 of 3.
go foundations
from hello world to a tested, concurrent http service. you build feedstack, a real feed aggregator, one lesson at a time.
data structures & algorithms (patterns)
the structures that run production and the patterns that close interviews. balanced trees, b-trees, graphs, and dynamic programming. part 2 of 3.
data structures & algorithms (legend)
contest-grade algorithms, mapped onto cp-algorithms. segment trees, suffix automata, max flow, fft, and the dp optimizations that win icpc and codeforces. part 3 of 3.
ai-native system design (foundations)
design perplexity on a whiteboard. inference internals, retrieval, evals, reliability, and cost engineering. first principles, paper-backed.
building production agents
design cursor on a whiteboard. agent loops, tool use, durable runtimes, sandboxing, and agent-specific evals.
ai engineer pro
specialist ai systems where the agent layer alone isn't enough. voice agents, multimodal, long-context vs rag, computer use, and on-device inference.
recently shipped
all courses- deep diveyesterday
bfs and dfs: the traversal patterns everything builds on
data structures & algorithms (foundations)
- lessonyesterday
representing graphs: adjacency list vs matrix
data structures & algorithms (foundations)
- lessonyesterday
heaps, priority queues, and heap sort
data structures & algorithms (foundations)
- lessonyesterday
binary search trees and the degenerate case
data structures & algorithms (foundations)
- lessonyesterday
binary trees and the four traversals
data structures & algorithms (foundations)
- deep diveyesterday
hash tables: collisions, load factor, and resizing
data structures & algorithms (foundations)
build the primitive. prove you can.
paper-backed starter repos for the backend primitives you ship at work. fork, build locally in go, python, or typescript, then push -- github actions verifies every stage and mints a credential anyone can trace.
- paper-backed: every primitive maps to the paper it came from.
- multi-language: go, python, and typescript from one spec.
- oidc-verified: the credential is signed by github, not handed out.
engineers who took it
notes from a few learners across backend, systems, and frontend roles.
I've been working as a backend engineer for a while, and most of my system design understanding came from scattered blogs, docs, and bits of papers. Karnstack helped bring that into a much clearer structure.
The papers-to-course format worked really well, ideas I'd seen before but never explored properly. Rollback makes it easy to stay updated without spending time filtering noise.
Overall, it's helped me approach design discussions with more clarity and context.
The course hits that sweet spot between depth and breadth of the topics involved in distributed systems, making it a great way to learn/revisit the fundamentals. Its interactive simulators and quizzes keep things fun and engaging while leveling up the architectural intuition from first principles.
I'm a frontend engineer who'd been faking my way through system design conversations for years. This course is the first thing that actually closed the gap. The communication module alone, tcp, tls, service discovery cleared up more than every half-read blog post combined. Now I can sit in a design review and actually follow what the backend folks are arguing about.
engineers who took it
notes from a few learners across backend, systems, and frontend roles.
I've been working as a backend engineer for a while, and most of my system design understanding came from scattered blogs, docs, and bits of papers. Karnstack helped bring that into a much clearer structure.
The papers-to-course format worked really well, ideas I'd seen before but never explored properly. Rollback makes it easy to stay updated without spending time filtering noise.
Overall, it's helped me approach design discussions with more clarity and context.
The course hits that sweet spot between depth and breadth of the topics involved in distributed systems, making it a great way to learn/revisit the fundamentals. Its interactive simulators and quizzes keep things fun and engaging while leveling up the architectural intuition from first principles.
I'm a frontend engineer who'd been faking my way through system design conversations for years. This course is the first thing that actually closed the gap. The communication module alone, tcp, tls, service discovery cleared up more than every half-read blog post combined. Now I can sit in a design review and actually follow what the backend folks are arguing about.
questions?
the usual stuff -- format, access, refunds. if you don’t see yours, mail me directly.
mail@karnstack.comquestions?
the usual stuff -- format, access, refunds. if you don’t see yours, mail me directly.
mail@karnstack.comone plan. everything.
every course, every build, verified certificates, and everything i ship next -- unlocked by a single plan. no tiers. launch pricing, locked in for as long as you stay.