GROW by Good Combinator

Public-sector AI: FedRAMP, OMB M-24-10, Section 508, and WCAG 2.2 AA. In Lesson 5.3 of GROW Course 5 (Vertical Specialization), Doug Liles works through it with you. The public-sector constraint set and the accessibility floor you cannot skip. What you'll take away - Public-sector reality - FedRAMP - OMB M-24-10 Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (0:50) Public-sector reality (1:40) Fe...

Audit-trail-first design for financial services: SEC 17a-4(f) and FINRA 4511. In Lesson 5.2 of GROW Course 5 (Vertical Specialization), Doug Liles works through it with you. An audit-trail-first posture that satisfies financial-services recordkeeping. What you'll take away - Audit-trail-first - SEC 17a-4(f) - FINRA 4511 Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (2:49) Audit-trail-first (5:39...

Clinical-grade AI: 21 CFR Part 11, HIPAA minimum-necessary, and the deferral floor. In Lesson 5.1 of GROW Course 5 (Vertical Specialization), Doug Liles works through it with you. What 'clinical-grade' demands of an FDE deployment and where the deferral floor sits. What you'll take away - Clinical-grade defined - 21 CFR Part 11 - HIPAA minimum-necessary Chapters (0:00) Cold open &...

The 8-hour Diagnosis-to-Demo capstone, end to end. In Lesson 4.12 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. A timed capstone that runs the whole Course 4 method under pressure. What you'll take away - The capstone brief - Diagnosis - Build Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (5:59) The capstone brief (11:59) Diagnosis (17:59) Build (23:58) Harde...

The forensic four-beat Partner Demo that closes the room. In Lesson 4.11 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. A four-beat demo structure that survives a skeptical audience. What you'll take away - Why most demos fail - Beat one - Beat two Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (3:58) Why most demos fail (7:56) Beat one (11:54) Beat two (15:53)...

The Departure Test: prove the system survives after you leave. In Lesson 4.10 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. A concrete test that proves Day-2 ownership has actually transferred. What you'll take away - Day-2 ownership - The Departure Test - Runbooks and handoff Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (5:20) Day-2 ownership (10:40) The De...

Compliance rails for regulated environments without freezing the build. In Lesson 4.9 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. Guardrails that satisfy a regulator while keeping the team moving. What you'll take away - Regulated reality - The rails - Audit trails Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (5:40) Regulated reality (11:20) The rails (17:...

Red-team your agent before a regulator or a user does. In Lesson 4.8 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. A red-teaming routine that surfaces failure before production does. What you'll take away - Why red-team - Attack surfaces - Adversarial inputs Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (6:39) Why red-team (13:19) Attack surfaces (19:59) Adve...

The three-layer grounding stack that kills hallucination at the source. In Lesson 4.7 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. A layered grounding approach that attacks hallucination structurally. What you'll take away - Why grounding - Layer one: retrieval - Layer two: constraints Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (7:54) Why grounding (15:48...

Build an eval suite with real cut scores, not vibes.  In Lesson 4.6 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. An eval suite with thresholds you can actually gate a release on.  What you'll take away - Why evals - Building the gold set - Metrics that matter  Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (5:53) Why evals (11:46) Building the gold set (17...

The four-pillar LLM observability model for production agents. In Lesson 4.5 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. A four-pillar model for seeing what your agent is actually doing in production. What you'll take away - Why observability - Pillar one - Pillar two Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (5:27) Why observability (10:54) Pillar one...

Instrument before you polish: why observability comes before features. In Lesson 4.4 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. An instrument-first prototyping order that pays off at Day-2. What you'll take away - Instrument-first principle - What to measure - Wiring telemetry early Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (7:30) Instrument-first prin...

Scope a pilot you can actually finish: the Scope-Out Defense.  In Lesson 4.3 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. A scoping discipline and a defensible way to say no to creep.  What you'll take away - Scoping for completion - The Scope-Out Defense - Cut lines  Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (7:06) Scoping for completion (14:13) The...

The Three Whys and naming the System of Record vs. System of Reference. In Lesson 4.2 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. A diagnostic that separates the authoritative system from the convenient one. What you'll take away - The Three Whys - Record vs. Reference - Naming the SoR Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (3:02) The Three Whys (6:0...

Map friction before you prototype: the discovery friction taxonomy. In Lesson 4.1 of GROW Course 4 (Hardening & Shipping), Doug Liles works through it with you. A friction taxonomy that tells you what to fix before writing code. What you'll take away - Why map friction first - The taxonomy - Spotting hidden friction Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (6:37) Why map friction first...

Ship a production agentic system: the Course 3 build capstone. In Lesson 3.15 of GROW Course 3 (Production Agentic Systems), Doug Liles works through it with you. A full production agentic build that ties the engineering core together. What you'll take away - The capstone brief - Architecture choices - Build walk-through Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (2:44) The capstone brief (5:...

Reasoning patterns — ReAct, plan-execute, reflection — and when each earns its cost. In Lesson 3.14 of GROW Course 3 (Production Agentic Systems), Doug Liles works through it with you. A guide to choosing a reasoning pattern by the cost and reliability it buys. What you'll take away - The pattern menu - ReAct - Plan-and-execute Chapters (00:00) Cold open [chapters set on audio scrub — see sect...

Model Context Protocol: wiring tools and context the portable way. In Lesson 3.13 of GROW Course 3 (Production Agentic Systems), Doug Liles works through it with you. How MCP standardizes tool and context wiring across hosts. What you'll take away - What MCP is - Servers and clients - Tools and resources Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (3:01) What MCP is (6:02) Servers and clients...

The semantic layer iceberg: why your data model decides your agent's ceiling. In Lesson 3.12 of GROW Course 3 (Production Agentic Systems), Doug Liles works through it with you. Why the semantic layer, not the model, sets your quality ceiling. What you'll take away - The iceberg - The visible model - The hidden semantics Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (2:22) The iceberg (4:44)...

State, memory, and long-term context: what to persist and what to forget. In Lesson 3.11 of GROW Course 3 (Production Agentic Systems), Doug Liles works through it with you. A memory architecture that remembers the right things and forgets the rest. What you'll take away - Kinds of memory - Short-term state - Long-term context Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (3:08) Kinds of memory...

The tool-use design patterns that keep an agent reliable under real inputs. In Lesson 3.10 of GROW Course 3 (Production Agentic Systems), Doug Liles works through it with you. Reusable tool-use patterns that hold up outside the demo. What you'll take away - Tool-use basics - Schema and validation - Failure handling Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (2:20) Tool-use basics (4:41) Schem...

Know which parts must be deterministic — and which can be probabilistic. In Lesson 3.9 of GROW Course 3 (Production Agentic Systems), Doug Liles works through it with you. A boundary rule for placing probabilistic and deterministic components. What you'll take away - Two kinds of components - Where determinism is mandatory - Where probability is fine Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise...

Compose a multi-agent system in LangGraph without losing control of state. In Lesson 3.8 of GROW Course 3 (Production Agentic Systems), Doug Liles works through it with you. A multi-agent pattern in LangGraph that stays debuggable. What you'll take away - When multi-agent earns its cost - Graph and nodes - Shared state Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (2:52) When multi-agent earns i...

Build a single agent end to end before you reach for multi-agent. In Lesson 3.7 of GROW Course 3 (Production Agentic Systems), Doug Liles works through it with you. A complete single-agent build you can run and extend. What you'll take away - Why single-agent first - The loop - Tools and memory Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (2:52) Why single-agent first (5:44) The loop (8:36) Too...

A working tour of the agentic frameworks — what each is actually good for. In Lesson 3.6 of GROW Course 3 (Production Agentic Systems), Doug Liles works through it with you. An honest comparison so you pick a framework for the job, not the hype. What you'll take away - The framework landscape - Orchestration models - State handling Chapters (0:00) Cold open & the promise (3:17) The framewo...