Socratic Three-Project Series
- prerequisites
- Intermediate command line • Basic Docker • Basic Git • Basic JSON and HTML • Basics of LLMs
- skills learned
- Choosing an open weights model for real hardware • running local models with Docker Model Runner • serving an OpenAI-compatible API • building local AI agents with the pi agent • vision, OCR, and translation with local models • running a domain-specialized model • hybrid local-and-cloud inference
pro $24.99 per month
- access to all Manning books, MEAPs, liveVideos, liveProjects, and audiobooks!
- choose one free eBook per month to keep
- exclusive 50% discount on all purchases
- renews monthly, pause or cancel renewal anytime
lite $19.99 per month
- access to all Manning books, including MEAPs!
team
5, 10 or 20 seats+ for your team - learn more
Socratic liveProjects pair you with an AI tutor to help you learn by doing, in real time.
You are an IT engineer at a midsize company where AI adoption is growing rapidly. But as the cloud AI bill climbs and confidential information leaves the company through API calls, management asks you to bring everyday AI work in-house. Across these three liveProjects, you’ll build a private local AI stack from the ground up: research open-weight models, run Google’s Gemma 4 on ordinary hardware with Docker Model Runner, and deploy a ChatGPT-style chatbot for coworkers. You’ll then connect the open-source pi agent to your local model so it can research proprietary documents and write code, before extending your agents with vision, exploring a fine-tuned MedGemma specialist model, and setting up hybrid inference that keeps routine work local while sending more demanding tasks to the cloud. By the end, you’ll have a working on-prem AI setup that runs on a typical laptop with 8–16 GB of memory.
These projects are designed for learning purposes and are not complete, production-ready applications or solutions.
here's what's included
Socratic Project 1 Run a Local Chatbot With Gemma 4
Socratic liveProjects pair you with an AI tutor to help you learn by doing, in real time.
In this liveProject, you’ll take on the role of an IT engineer helping a midsize company reduce its dependence on costly cloud AI services and keep sensitive data in-house. Your goal is to build a proof-of-concept private alternative to ChatGPT using open-weight models running on local hardware. You’ll survey models and hardware options, set up the cross-platform Docker Model Runner, and run Google’s Gemma 4 E4B model on your own computer. You’ll first interact with the model from the command line, then deploy it through Open WebUI to create a browser-based chatbot that can be demonstrated to management and made available to non-technical colleagues.
learn more
$29.99
$17.99
Socratic Project 2 Agentic Apps With the Local AI
Socratic liveProjects pair you with an AI tutor to help you learn by doing, in real time.
In this liveProject, you’ll help your company’s local-AI rollout by moving beyond chatbots and putting your private AI model to work as an agent. You’ll connect the open-source coding agent pi to the local Gemma 4 model from the previous project through Docker Model Runner’s inference API. You’ll then use the agent for two practical tasks: researching a folder of company documents and answering questions with citations to its sources, and generating a self-contained web page based on the same documents. Along the way, you’ll see how local models can support autonomous research and coding while keeping company data on-premises.
learn more
$29.99
$17.99
Socratic Project 3 Multimodal and Specialized Agents Based on Local AI
Socratic liveProjects pair you with an AI tutor to help you learn by doing, in real time.
In this liveProject, you’ll take the company’s local AI rollout to the next level by giving its agents the ability to work with images as well as text. You’ll enhance prebuilt agents to process site photos, printed notices, and whiteboard sketches, turning visual information into useful answers and working web pages. You’ll also explore how fine-tuned open-weight models can be adapted for specialized business knowledge, and how local and cloud models can work together in a hybrid setup. By the end, you’ll have a practical path for combining private, specialized local AI with cloud models when additional capabilities are needed.
learn more
$29.99
$17.99
books resources
When you start each of the projects in this series, you'll get full access to the following books for 90 days.
choose your plan
pro
monthly
annual
$24.99
$249.99
only $20.83 per month
- access to all Manning books, MEAPs, liveVideos, liveProjects, and audiobooks!
- choose another free product every time you renew
- choose twelve free products per year
- exclusive 50% discount on all purchases
- renews monthly, pause or cancel renewal anytime
- renews annually, pause or cancel renewal anytime
-
![]()
Open LLMs on Your Own Computer project for free
Open LLMs on Your Own Computer project for free
team
monthly
annual
$49.99
$499.99
only $41.67 per month
- five seats for your team
- access to all Manning books, MEAPs, liveVideos, liveProjects, and audiobooks!
- choose another free product every time you renew
- choose twelve free products per year
- exclusive 50% discount on all purchases
- renews monthly, pause or cancel renewal anytime
- renews annually, pause or cancel renewal anytime
-
![]()
Open LLMs on Your Own Computer project for free
Prerequisites
These liveProjects are for software developers and IT professionals who are interested in building LLM applications in their own domains. To begin, you will need to know the following:
TOOLS (minimum versions)- Basics of the CLI
- Basics of Docker
- Basics of Node.js and npm
- Basics of Python 3
- Basics of LLMs
features
- Self-paced
- You choose the schedule and decide how much time to invest as you build your project.
- Project roadmap
- Each project is divided into several achievable steps.
- Get Help
- While within the liveProject platform, get help from fellow participants and even more help with paid sessions with our expert mentors.
- Compare with others
- For each step, compare your deliverable to the solutions by the author and other participants.
- books included as resources
- Get full access to select books for 90 days. Permanent access to excerpts from Manning products are also included, as well as references to other resources.
