Every skull was a JS framework.

Modern Coding School teaches you to judge, direct, and ship AI-built software to a production standard — by reading the autopsies of everything that shipped without judgment. People's servers died for your knowledge.

Self-hosted. Sovereign. No platform owns your credential, and no model you can't defend ships to prod.

Apply Read an autopsy

SELFHOSTED 100%FOSS ONFEDIVERSE NOTRACKERS RSSSUBSCRIBE

Vasily Vereshchagin, The Apotheosis of War, 1871 — a pyramid of human skulls in a desert under a cobalt sky, crows circling. The monument to everything shipped without judgment. — Vereshchagin · *The Apotheosis of War* · 1871 The monument to everything we shipped without reading it.

Technical judgment, without
technical production.

Read, don’t write

Control flow, data flow, diffs, stack traces. Understand the code you didn’t type — and the autopsy of the one that died.

Specify

Turn a vague want into executable agent instructions a machine cannot misread.

Verify

Trust output you didn’t write — and prove it clears the bar before it ships anywhere near prod.

One core. Two tracks.
Every exit is defended.

Every concept is published free, forever. We sell the with-you: the feedback, the lab, the gate, the credential you actually own.

CORE 4 weeks

Technical Judgment

The shared foundation: reading code you didn't write, specifying work for agents, verifying output, and clearing a production bar.

Read a diff and a stack trace
Spec work an agent can execute
Verify output against a source
Clear the production bar

TRACK A 6 weeks

Production & Self-Host

Deploy and operate a real system on your own metal: domains, TLS, secrets, backups, logs, rollback.

Own the deploy and the fire
Logs · monitoring · rollback
Secrets and TLS without a SaaS
Exam: find and fix a real bug

TRACK B 8 weeks

Agent Company

Orchestrate agents behind verification gates with real unit economics — and no platform or model lock-in.

Verification gates that actually gate
Token cost and model routing
Self-hosted defensible models
Exam: a business that ran 30 days

An agent-operated school that
doesn’t depend on a platform.

Software does the first pass of everything; one human owns the judgment. It runs self-hosted, on open models we can defend. The business is the demo — you're reading it.

Incident Days

We inject real failures into your workspace — a leaked secret, a runaway agent loop. You diagnose under time pressure.

Rubric-as-code

The gate: automated checks + agent first-review + human sign-off. First-pass feedback in minutes, not days.

The signed credential

Your diploma is a cryptographically signed artifact on your own domain — verifiable, federated, owned by you.

Run on your metal

The whole stack is FOSS and self-hostable. Learn to operate it without renting anyone's cloud or trusting anyone's model blindly.

Learn on other
people’s mistakes.

The whole morgue →

AUTOPSY No. 41

This AI-built app leaked every user's email. Here's the line.

A citizen-built CRM. One missing auth check. 14,000 records walked out the front door.

Read the autopsy →

JUDGMENT No. 40

Five questions to ask before you trust your agent's output.

A reading list for the diff you didn't write.

AUTOPSY No. 39

The runaway agent that spent €4,200 in a weekend.

No spend cap, no kill switch, a recursive tool loop.

INCIDENT No. 38

The migration that dropped the table it meant to rename.

An agent-written migration. A staging that wasn't prod-shaped. A Monday.

AUTOPSY No. 37

The login that let everyone in if you left the password blank.

A truthy check on an empty string. Generated, approved, deployed.

One autopsy, one judgment lesson, every week. Subscribe by e-mail or RSS — we won’t build a moat out of your inbox.

A credential no
platform can revoke.

Every entry is signed, self-hosted on the graduate’s own domain, and federated. Verify it from the command line. Click one — it runs.

~/credentials/dana-okafor.cert

--BEGIN MCS CREDENTIAL--
holder:   Dana Okafor
degree:   M. Agent Operations
track:    B · cohort MMXXVI-1
capstone: ledgerloop.app  [200 OK]
gate:     CONFERRED · score 94
key:      9F2A 4C71 … E0B3
--END MCS CREDENTIAL--

$ mcs verify dana-okafor.cert signature valid

Dana Okafor 9F2A…E0B3 Track B ledgerloop.app CONFERRED 94

Priya Shah 4C18…A7D2 Track A shiftdesk.io CONFERRED 88

Marco Ferreira B033…1FE9 Track B cohortmail.dev CONFERRED 91

Lena Vogt 22AB…7C0E Track A parkpass.app IN REVIEW

mcs-webring241 sites · 71% conferred

Don’t add to
the pile.

The application is the first exercise: spec a small build with any agent, submit the result — and your own evaluation of it. The admissions agent scores your judgment; a human makes the call.

Apply — it’s the first exercise no fee to apply · one resubmission included

The Apotheosis of War, detail — join the register, not the monument. — join the register, not the monument

Questions we get asked

Updated as new ones come in. Email us if yours isn't here.

Who is this for?

People who can already generate working-looking software with AI tools, but can't yet evaluate, secure, or operate it. You don't need a computer-science background. You need to care about the difference between 'it ran on my machine' and 'it's ready for production.'

What does the gate mean?

Every piece of work either clears the production bar — CONFERRED — or it doesn't — WITHHELD. Pass/fail is the core mechanic. There is no partial credit for software that almost works.

Is the content free?

Every concept is published free, forever. What you pay for is the with-you part: the feedback, the lab, the gate, and a credential you actually own.

What is a signed credential?

Your diploma is a cryptographically signed, self-hosted, federated artifact. It lives in the register, syndicates to the webring, and verifies against the register's record. No platform can revoke it.

What does self-hosted mean here?

The school runs on open models and infrastructure it can defend. No trackers, no required cloud, no model you can't host. Graduates can run the whole stack themselves — and a reduced-tuition track rewards them for doing it.

When does the next cohort start?

The founding cohort starts when all 18 seats are filled — estimated Q3 MMXXVI. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis; expect a reply within 48 hours.

Don't add to the pile.

The application is the first exercise. Spec a small build with any agent, submit the result, and your own evaluation of it.

Apply Read the manifesto