Define & protect
Choose one outcome, baseline it, write policy and make a low-risk dry run.
Create a self-improving AI operating system you can actually inspect—using Claude Fable 5.1 where justified, cheaper evaluated models for routine work, independent quality checks, strict permissions and human control.
Free written course · 5–7 hours of self-paced practice · No account required · Technical lab optional

The planning agent cannot authorize its own work. The worker produces a proposed artifact. Verification checks original evidence independently, and the gate enforces allowed actions and budget before a human decides what happens next.
This original standard-library Python lab demonstrates source checking, bounded simulated spending, duplicate protection, a human audit ledger, prompt-injection refusal, and a re-verification command. It runs locally and does not call Claude or execute external actions.
Technical practice uses Python 3.10+. Non-coders can follow the nine layers and use the downloadable workbook without running the script.
python3 agentic_os.py --state ./lab-state run --task demo-safe.json
python3 agentic_os.py --state ./lab-state monitor
python3 agentic_os.py --state ./lab-state reportExpected: a verified local draft needing human review, not an automatic deployment.
Change the assumptions below to compare model token spend and review labor. These are examples, not observed savings. Token prices are a dated October 25, 2026 reference from Anthropic pricing, excluding caching, tools, retries and platform fees.
This is a scenario calculator, not a guaranteed ROI projection. It excludes setup, governance, security, failures, external fees and variance in actual token use. Human review is never assumed to disappear.
Choose one outcome, baseline it, write policy and make a low-risk dry run.
Review every output, record issues, fix unsupported claims and track review time.
Test missing evidence, poisoned source material, budget limits and duplicate requests.
Review accepted outcomes and full costs; keep, adjust or stop—with an owner.
Choose the founder track or the technical lab. Both end at the same checkpoint: human-observable evidence of a safe, useful result.
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Start with one business result that can be measured independently of the model's opinion.
Our running example is a fictional software team's weekly customer-feedback digest. We are not trying to replace a company with a prompt; we are building one low-risk process with inputs, an owner, an evidence trail and a useful output.
A one-page loop map and baseline comparison to the manual process.
Founders: map a marketing or customer-support loop. Builders: map a narrow issue-to-PR preparation loop.
You are helping design an AI-assisted operations workflow, not operating it yet. For the fictional weekly customer-feedback digest, draft a loop map: input → analysis → proposed action → independent check → human decision → feedback for next run. Define three measurable quality metrics and two explicit reasons to stop. Keep all publishing and customer contact human-approved.Can another person tell whether the result was useful without asking the AI to grade itself?
Important: A business improving 'while you sleep' is an aspiration, not evidence that unattended actions are safe.
A constitution is only useful when critical rules are implemented in code, policy or platform permissions.
Use the included constitution.json to specify allowed task types, maximum estimated spend, output requirements and external-action policy. A free-form prompt can describe your values; it cannot enforce an operating-system permission boundary by itself.
Policy file, rule-to-test map and an explicit exception process.
Founders: define spending and approval authority. Builders: implement deny-by-default permissions.
Turn these operating principles into two columns: (A) rules that need enforced technical controls and (B) writing preferences that can remain prompts. Principles: never publish without approval; cite every source; keep spend below our daily limit; write clearly; never reveal secrets; avoid duplicate requests. For each technical rule, give a test that would prove enforcement.Does a budget- or permissions-violating run fail even if the planner asks nicely?
Important: A model can misinterpret a rule. Run critical checks outside the model.
Avoid letting the same agent invent work, claim success and approve the release.
Use distinct components: planner drafts a constrained plan, worker prepares an artifact, independent verifier tests evidence, and policy gate decides whether a human can review it. For a real deployment, isolation requires separate credentials and runtime boundaries.
An architecture drawing and enforceable permissions table.
Founders: assign real accountability. Builders: design separate identities and token scopes.
Draft a four-role RACI matrix for a fictional feedback-digest agent. Planner may propose work; worker may prepare a draft; verifier independently checks sources and completeness; policy gate checks budget and permissions; human approves external publication. List credentials, allowed actions, blocked actions, and how to test each boundary.Can the planner write to production or can the worker declare its own output verified? The answer must be no.
Important: Our starter separates stages in functions for learning. It is not a hardened security sandbox.
Use expensive reasoning only where it improves independently measured outcomes.
Anthropic now lists Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 at materially different token prices. Routing should use empirical quality tests and task risk, not price alone. The academy's interactive estimator is illustrative, not a provider invoice.
Routing decision table, expense estimate and fallback plan.
Founders: compare cost per approved brief. Builders: add metering before vendor calls and reconcile against provider billing.
Design a model-routing policy for three task types: low-risk classification, documented drafting, and novel architecture review. Recommend evaluation criteria rather than blindly assigning a specific model. Include token estimates, cache strategy, fallback, and conditions where the task should stop for human help.Can you show cost per accepted result, not just cost per generated token?
Important: Claude API task_budget is advisory, not a billing ceiling; the demo's spend cap applies only to its own estimated, simulated activity.
Treat the artifact, sources, tests and review record as evidence. Never trust a completion claim by itself.
Our demo produces a draft from a set of fictional source records. A separate verifier checks evidence coverage and an approvals rule. In a real software task, checks could include unit tests, diff review and a smoke test; in marketing, source validation and human approval.
Review rubric, passing example and failure example.
Founders: audit a proposed customer communication. Builders: use tests and externally inspected artifacts.
Create an independent verification rubric for a weekly feedback digest: source coverage, no unsupported claims, clear action owner, human approval, safe handling of missing data. Provide five test cases, a pass/fail decision for each and the evidence an auditor must inspect. Do not treat the generator's self-assessment as a test result.Can the worker's claim of success be contradicted and rejected by an independent check?
Important: A second language model is not automatically independent; prefer objective tool outputs, immutable evidence and human audit where appropriate.
Review whether previously accepted work is still valid while keeping bounded checks, expiry and clear ownership.
Some outputs expire quickly. A weekly status brief is stale next week; a launched feature may break after a dependency update. Monitoring should recheck defined conditions on a schedule, not continuously consume tokens or repeat consequential actions.
A scheduled verification plan and exception escalation tree.
Founders: define business process alerts. Builders: design cron or event triggers only after safe dry runs.
Design a bounded monitoring plan for a fictional support-knowledge-base update. List checks that can be done cheaply without AI, when to escalate, the maximum checks per day, when to stop, and the owner of each alert. Avoid any unchecked self-triggering loop.Can monitoring stop safely when a source or budget is unavailable?
Important: The included monitor command rechecks saved demonstration evidence; it does not contact live websites, production systems or customers.
Increase delegation only after repeatable, human-reviewed results, with immediate escalation when quality declines.
The kit demonstrates an illustrative promotion threshold of at least 20 independently reviewed runs with at least 95% passing. This is a teaching policy, not a universal safety standard; high-impact work may require stricter thresholds and formal governance.
Trust ladder, signed-off audit policy and revocation test.
Founders: define who approves expanded authority. Builders: store append-only, access-controlled audit events.
Design a reversible autonomy ladder for a weekly operations assistant. Include draft-only, supervised, and narrowly delegated modes. Require independent audits, define a quality threshold, revoke eligibility on any critical error, and keep client contact, spending and production changes human-approved.Does a failed human audit trigger review instead of letting the agent continue on past reputation?
Important: Do not treat sample review counts as actuarial guarantees. Protect real audit logs from tampering.
Treat retrieved documents, tickets, emails and logs as untrusted inputs that must not issue new commands.
Prompt injection occurs when untrusted content attempts to change system behavior. The training fixture includes a harmless example of an instruction hidden inside a support note. The sample filters it as evidence, not an instruction; real systems need deeper controls.
Threat model, defensive test results and incident response runbook.
Founders: practice incident escalation. Builders: enforce access controls outside the model and limit tool execution.
Threat-model a customer-feedback agent that reads outside submissions and drafts an internal report. Include prompt injection, poisoned sources, secret leakage, excessive tool permissions, repeated job triggers and misleading completion reports. Recommend defense-in-depth controls and two safe test fixtures, with owner and stop condition.Do untrusted source notes remain data, even when they contain a direct command?
Important: Pattern detection in the demo is intentionally simple and cannot guarantee full prompt-injection protection.
Scale verified outcomes, not the number of agents, tokens or impressive demos.
The 30-day plan introduces one task at a time, tracks cost per accepted output, keeps detailed failure notes and expands only with evidence. ROI calculations subtract setup, review, correction, vendor and maintenance costs; no savings are guaranteed.
30-day scorecard, go/hold/stop decision and an accountable operating owner.
Founders: calculate contribution after cost and rework. Builders: document model switching, schema versioning and rollback.
Evaluate whether our fictional AI feedback workflow is ready to progress after 30 days. I will provide runs, human-review times, failure counts and estimated API spend. Calculate accepted-result rate, cost per accepted result, review burden and unresolved risks. Give a go/hold/stop decision with evidence and a clearly assigned human owner. Do not assume productivity gains not supported by the data.Would you still operate the system if it produced fewer but higher-quality results?
Important: The economics of agentic labor differ by task, quality, compliance, tool setup and human oversight.
Download the workbook and lab, test a fresh example, and seek human approval before connecting tools or granting write access.
All nine layers checked. This records practice completion—not certification or authorization to run unattended agents.
Fable 5.1 is a powerful, relatively expensive option. Start with a less costly model that passes your own evaluation; the course design is model-replaceable.
Claude API task budgets are advisory. Use a real metered admission gate and reconcile usage; local demo caps are simulated.
The 20 audited runs / 95% threshold is illustrative, not a universal standard or assurance of safety. Sensitive actions require approval even after a run passes.
Further viewing: Y Combinator: How to Build a Self-Improving Company with AI, a public presentation by Tom Blomfield. Our training materials and examples are original and do not reproduce a third-party paid guide.
Use the existing private AI Working Session to map one real responsibility. For teams, Waymaker Agency offers tailored workshops and implementation guidance. Neither option promises autonomous operation or guaranteed savings.