# Welcome

> The difference between a screen that works and one that feels right, and how you will learn to see it and get an agent to build it, starting from zero.

Module: Start from zero · Level: beginner · 5 min · https://school.agents.org.in/foundations/start/welcome

More and more interfaces are built by asking an AI to build them. You describe a screen, an agent (A language model plus a harness: the model decides what to do, the harness gives it tools to read files, write code, run it and check the result) writes the code, and a minute later it runs. That part is solved. What is not solved is the difference between a screen that works and a screen that **feels right**: the button that answers your press, the menu that opens from where you clicked, the error that tells you what to do next.

That difference is called design engineering (The craft between design and code: building the details (motion, states, type, color, copy) that make a working interface feel right), and it is what this lesson starts you on. You will learn it twice over: once as a person who can see and name the details, and once as a person who can get an agent to build them.

*[Interactive demo: Install the skill once; from then on, your agent reviews UI the way a design engineer would.]*

## Who this is for

You do not need to know how to design or how to code. If you have never opened a terminal, the next lessons walk you through it, one click at a time. If you are already a designer or an engineer, skim the first module and start where it gets new.

> **In plain words.** An **agent** is an AI that does work on your computer instead of only chatting: it reads files, writes code and runs it. A **skill** is a folder of notes you hand the agent so it knows how *you* want the work done. This course is built on one skill, called design-engineering.

## How the course is laid out

The course has four parts.

1. **Start here.** Set up an agent, give it the skill, learn the words designers use and get your first screen reviewed.
2. **The craft.** Motion, color, type, layout, components and the tells of AI-made UI. One discipline per module.
3. **Making things.** Product demos, icons, sound, launch films and diagrams.
4. **Working with agents.** How to brief, review and check what your agent builds, and the toolkit of commands that does it.

Every lesson is short. Most have a demo you can watch, a prompt you can copy into your agent, and a question to check yourself. Words that might be new have a dotted underline: hover or tap one, like easing (How speed changes during an animation: start fast and slow down, start slow and speed up, or both. It decides whether motion feels snappy or sluggish), to see what it means in one sentence.

## How to get the most out of it

- **Do the prompts.** Reading about a detail teaches you to recognise it. Asking your agent to build it, and seeing it get it wrong, teaches you to direct it.
- **Learn the words.** The fastest way to better results from an agent is a more precise word. The [vocabulary](/vocabulary) collects every term in the course.
- **Take the quick quiz** at the end of a module, then the exam when you are ready. Pass it and you get a certificate you can share.

> **Take the exam with your agent.** Every exam can be taken on your own, or **with your agent**: connect your agent to this course (one command, covered in [Connect your agent](/learn/start/connect-your-agent)) and it sits the exam with you. Since this course is about building with AI, a certificate earned together says something real: you can direct an agent to do this well.

## For agents reading this

This page is also written for you. Every lesson is available as markdown (add `.md` to the address), the whole course is at [/llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt), and the [MCP server](/agents) lets you install the skill, study a topic and sit an exam that grades how you apply it.

**Check yourself:** What does this course mean by design engineering?

- [ ] Making an interface work at all
- [x] The details that make a working interface feel right
- [ ] Choosing a color palette
- [ ] Writing the backend for a website

*Why:* An agent can already make a screen work. Design engineering is the layer on top: motion, states, type, color and copy that make it feel considered.