Gapstars AI Academy

Last updated 7 October 2026

Learner guide

Welcome

The AI Academy is how Gapstars engineers prove they can build with AI, by shipping real work. You take a short placement check, work through a path of modules at your tier, then earn the tier by delivering a client-style brief that a senior engineer reviews.

There are three tiers: T1 Ship It, T2 Design It and T3 Scale It. Everyone starts with the same placement, and everyone on the Full-Stack Developer path does the same modules. This is a pilot, so what you tell us about it will change it.

Signing in

Choose Sign in. You sign in with your Gapstars account through the same login as COSMOS.

• If you are already signed in to COSMOS in that browser, you go straight through.
• If not, you see the Gapstars login page. Use your normal credentials.
• If the login page says your email is not registered, your account has not yet been added to the Academy. Message Gihan or Dakshinee.

Sign out from the menu under your name. Signing out of the Academy does not sign you out of COSMOS.

Placement

The first time you sign in, you take a short placement check. It takes about ten minutes and you do it once.

1. About you. Choose your role and the area you mainly work in today. The area does not change what you learn; it only orders the optional material.
2. How you work. A handful of questions about what you actually did the last time you shipped something. There are no right answers to study for, and you can go back and change an answer until you see your result.
3. Your starting point. You see the tier the check recommends and a plain-language reason.

You can start at the recommended tier or choose a lower one, never a higher one. Starting lower is fine. The tiers you were placed above stay open to you, and completing their modules does not change your starting tier.

Your path

After placement you land on your dashboard. It shows your tier, how many of its modules you have completed, and a Start here or Continue button that takes you to the next module.

Learning path lists the modules for your tier in order. Everything on it is required. The order is deliberate: it moves between interface, API, pipeline and security so that each tier reads as one build rather than four separate topics.

Tiers above yours are locked until you complete the modules in your current tier. Tiers below yours are open and optional.

Your Profile, under your name, shows your progress across all three tiers, your placement result, your certification submissions and any badges you have earned.

Working through a module

Each tier is one project, the tier's certification brief, built a week at a time. Each module is one week of that build:

1. About 1 hour of learning. A course module, a hands-on lab, or a talk, chosen for exactly what this week's build needs.
2. About 2 hours of building. The module's milestone on your tier project. It is a concrete operation someone else can check, not a reading.

Each module page opens with a short note on what to do, then the learning, then the milestone. The resources at the top are what this week needs; the rest is extra depth if you want it.

The Academy cannot tell when you have finished, so you mark the module yourself. When the milestone is done, select Mark module complete. If you do it by mistake, Undo reverses it.

Once a module is complete, Next module takes you to the next one on your path. After the last module in a tier it reads Go to certification.

At Tier 2, a few modules offer I have done this already. If you have shipped this kind of work before, write a sentence or two about what you built, with a link if you have one, and the module is marked done. Be honest; a reviewer can see what you wrote.

Earning a tier

Finishing the modules unlocks the next tier. It does not earn the current one. A tier is earned by delivering its certification brief.

Each tier has one brief: a short, realistic client project with a clear definition of done. You build it, open a pull request, and submit the link from the Certification page.

A senior engineer reviews it against a published rubric. You see the result criterion by criterion: what was met, what was not, and the reviewer's comments. The pass rule is every critical check met plus at least 70 of 100 points. If changes are requested, fix them and submit again. Every attempt is kept.

At the review there is a short defence. The reviewer applies one change you have not seen and asks you to reason about it. That is where the tier is actually decided.

Passing issues your badge for the tier, which appears on your profile.

The Library

The Library holds everything that is not on your path: deeper modules on FrontEnd, BackEnd, DevOps and AI Engineering, grouped by area.

Nothing in the Library is required and nothing in it counts toward your progress. Open anything that interests you, in any order. Some Library modules are large; the estimated time on each one is real, so check it before you start.

Time

The programme is built for three hours a week, and no week asks for more: about one hour of learning and two hours of building.

The delivery weeks are for finishing the project, submitting it and defending it. All three tiers take about 19 weeks, roughly four and a half months.

This is a pilot. The timings, the modules and the briefs will be adjusted based on how the first group finds them, so if something takes far longer than it says, that is useful information rather than a failure on your part.

Help

• Can't sign in: your account may not be added yet. Message Gihan or Dakshinee.
• Something looks wrong on a page: tell Dakshinee what you were doing and what you saw. A screenshot helps.
• A resource link is dead or the content is poor: say which module and which resource. Links are checked, but things move.
• Feedback on the programme itself: what took too long, what was too easy, what was missing. This is what the pilot is for.