Build Your First AI Assistant Safely

Store a model API key in an environment variable without exposing it in Python source code.

Configure and verify an API usage limit or billing alert that keeps paid experiments within an $8 budget.

Send a single request to a large language model from Python and print its response.

Construct a prompt containing a clear task, relevant context, and explicit constraints.

Test a prompt against a small set of examples and record where its responses fail.

Implement a command-line AI assistant that preserves conversation history.

Distinguish rule-based software, traditional machine learning, and generative AI from their inputs and outputs.