# Systems Thinking in the AI Era

> AI writes the code; you make the call. Teaching engineers to build judgment in the AI era through the 7 universal building blocks behind every system.

## About

Systems Thinking in the AI Era is a course series by Kay Ashaolu (UC Berkeley) that transforms junior engineers into senior architectural thinkers. The framework teaches that every software system — Instagram, Netflix, Uber, Slack — is built from the same 7 building blocks and 3 external entities. Kay designed and teaches this framework at UC Berkeley (INFO 153B / 253B, Backend Web Architecture).

**The thesis:** In the AI era, output is cheap and judgment is the job. AI generates code; the human skill that matters is judgment — knowing which system to build and why, and whether what the AI produced is right. Judgment comes from DOING, not just consuming content. So the site is organized as a journey: **Learn** (free knowledge + practice — articles, the full video series, the building-blocks game, and the Design with Blocks skill) and **Master** (the paid courses, where judgment is built through graded reps, hands-on labs, and feedback you can't get on your own). Knowledge → practice → judgment.

## The 7 Building Blocks

1. **Service** - Stateless compute that processes requests synchronously (Express, Django, Spring)
2. **Worker** - Background task processors; the user has moved on before work completes (Celery, SQS consumers)
3. **Key-Value Store** - Fast lookups by key (Redis, DynamoDB)
4. **File Store** - Binary/blob storage for large files (S3, GCS)
5. **Queue** - Async message passing that decouples producers from consumers (SQS, Kafka, RabbitMQ)
6. **Relational Database** - Structured data with relationships (PostgreSQL, MySQL)
7. **Vector Database** - Similarity search for AI/ML workloads (Pinecone, Weaviate)

## The 3 External Entities

1. **User** - Human input the system must handle
2. **External Service** - Third-party APIs the system depends on
3. **Time** - Schedules, expirations, retries

## Who This Is For

- Junior/mid-level software engineers wanting to level up
- Bootcamp graduates bridging the gap to production systems
- Engineers preparing for system design interviews
- Developers using AI coding tools who want architectural understanding
- Anyone who can build with AI but cannot yet read or reason about what was built

## Course Structure

- **Course I:** Universal Building Blocks — $99
- **Course II:** Content Systems (Instagram, Netflix, YouTube) — $114 early-bird (will be $149 once videos ship). Content, labs, assessment, and 3-part challenge are live; videos still being recorded.
- **Course III:** Real-Time Systems (Slack, Discord, WhatsApp) — $114 early-bird (will be $149 once videos ship). Content, labs, assessment, and 3-part challenge are live; videos still being recorded.
- **Course IV:** Business & Transaction Systems (Stripe, Shopify, Salesforce) — $114 early-bird (will be $149 once videos ship). Content, labs, assessment, and 3-part challenge are live; videos still being recorded.

Course I contains 15 components: 12 lessons, 2 discovery labs, 1 case study (Link Shortener), 1 three-part system design challenge (ChefConnect), and 1 AI-graded assessment.

## Free Resources (the "Learn" tier — knowledge + practice, all free)

### Learn the Framework
The 7 Building Blocks framework is freely available at systemthinkinglab.ai/learn/ — one page where you can read the 7 articles, watch the full video series, and play the building-blocks game. No signup required. (The original 7-lesson video series also has individual pages at systemthinkinglab.ai/free-course/{slug}/.)

### Building Blocks Game (free practice)
An in-browser game: design Instagram, Netflix, and Uber from scratch by placing the 7 building blocks. No signup. systemthinkinglab.ai/building-block-game/

### Design with Blocks — Claude skill (free practice)
A free Claude skill that designs your own application using the 7 building blocks. Describe your app in one paragraph; get a labeled architecture diagram, per-block technology recommendations, and a markdown design doc. Works on claude.ai and Claude Code. Apache 2.0, installable from the Systems Thinking Lab Claude Code marketplace at github.com/kayashaolu/systemthinkinglab. systemthinkinglab.ai/design-with-blocks

### Review with Blocks — Claude skill (free practice)
A free Claude skill that reviews a system design against the 7 building blocks and the non-functional "-ilities" (scalability, reliability, durability, consistency, latency, availability, security). Paste a design doc or diagram; get a prioritized critique, a holds/at-risk/gap rating per load-bearing -ility with its tradeoff, and the questions a senior would ask. The review end of design → build → review. Free, Apache 2.0, from the same marketplace. systemthinkinglab.ai/review-with-blocks

### Scaffold — Claude Code plugin (free, open source)
A mentor for individual junior engineers: plan-first coaching on real coding tasks, a compounding codebase wiki (extending Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki pattern) plus a ledger of what you've actually demonstrated, and a growth report on every commit. Free and open source; install via the systemthinkinglab marketplace. systemthinkinglab.ai/scaffold

### Free email course
A 5-part email course that teaches the framework, then graduates into a weekly Saturday letter. Sign up via any email-capture form on the site (or the "Start the free course" button).

## For Teams (engineering managers & team leads)

### Free Team Workshop Kit
A free, turnkey facilitator kit to run a 90-minute systems-thinking workshop with your engineering team, built entirely on the free framework: talking points, a printable 7-blocks + 3-forces cheat sheet, two exercise options (play the building-blocks game together, or decompose a system your team owns), and debrief prompts. The fastest way to give a whole team the shared lens at once. systemthinkinglab.ai/teams/workshop-kit/

### Team Cohort (paid)
For teams that want to build judgment together: group enrollment in the courses with discounted per-seat pricing, single-invoice purchasing, and a ready-made 4-week cohort plan. systemthinkinglab.ai/teams/

## Essays & Weekly Letters

A short weekly letter of systems-thinking insights for engineers, framed through the seven building blocks. Issues range widely: a worked example of a real system (Instagram, Netflix, Stripe), a single building-block idea explored in depth, a mental model, a tradeoff, or the AI-era shift from output to judgment. The through-line is the systems-thinking lens, not any one format or a fixed "teardown a system each week." New letters publish every Saturday morning Pacific at https://systemthinkinglab.ai/newsletters/. The full essay archive (consolidated from the old blog in June 2026; old /blog/ URLs 301-redirect here) lives at the same place. Subscribing is free via any email-capture form on the site.

## Links

- Homepage: https://systemthinkinglab.ai
- Learn the Framework (read · watch · play): https://systemthinkinglab.ai/learn
- Building Blocks Game: https://systemthinkinglab.ai/building-block-game/
- Design with Blocks (Claude skill): https://systemthinkinglab.ai/design-with-blocks
- Review with Blocks (Claude skill): https://systemthinkinglab.ai/review-with-blocks
- Scaffold (Claude Code plugin, free/open source): https://systemthinkinglab.ai/scaffold
- Courses (the paid "Master" tier): https://systemthinkinglab.ai/course-1
- Free Team Workshop Kit: https://systemthinkinglab.ai/teams/workshop-kit/
- For Teams (group cohort): https://systemthinkinglab.ai/teams/
- Essays & Weekly Letters: https://systemthinkinglab.ai/newsletters/

## Contact

- Website: https://systemthinkinglab.ai
- Email: support@systemthinkinglab.ai