AI/ML Roadmap

A curated, community-maintained collection of the best free and paid resources to learn every topic in the AI/ML Roadmap for Beginners 2026 — from Python basics all the way to Generative AI.

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The Roadmap

Source: AI/ML Roadmap for Beginners 2026 — Netra Neupane on Medium

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Legend

Icon	Type
📺	YouTube Video
📄	Article / Blog Post
📘	Official Documentation
🎓	Free Course
💰	Paid Course / Book

Resources within each topic are sorted Beginner → Intermediate → Advanced.

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Table of Contents

• Module 1: Python Programming
• Module 2: Data Foundation
• Module 3: Basic Data Pre-processing
• Module 4: Math Foundations
• Module 5: ML Foundations
• Module 6: ML Core Concepts
• Module 7: Database & Engineering Basics
• Module 8: Deep Learning
• Module 9: Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Module 10: Generative AI
• Module 11: Evaluation, Responsible AI & Monitoring
• Module 12: Capstone Projects

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Module 1: Python Programming

Python Fundamentals

• 📘 The Python Tutorial — Official Docs Beginner
• 📺 Python Tutorials for Beginners — Corey Schafer Beginner
• 📺 Learn Python — Full Course for Beginners — freeCodeCamp Beginner
• 🎓 CS50P: Introduction to Programming with Python — Harvard Beginner (Free)
• 📘 Control Flow Tools (loops, functions) — Python Docs Beginner
• 📘 Data Structures (lists, dicts, sets) — Python Docs Intermediate
• 💰 Automate the Boring Stuff with Python — Al Sweigart Intermediate (Free to read online)

OOP in Python

• 📺 Object-Oriented Programming — Corey Schafer Beginner
• 📘 Classes — Python Official Tutorial (Ch. 9) Intermediate
• 📄 OOP in Python — Real Python Intermediate
• 📘 dataclasses — Auto-generate __init__, __repr__ — Python Docs Advanced
• 📄 Python Magic Methods — Real Python Advanced

Decorators and Generators

• 📺 Decorators — Corey Schafer Intermediate
• 📄 Primer on Python Decorators — Real Python Intermediate
• 📺 Generators — Corey Schafer Intermediate
• 📄 Python Generators — Real Python Intermediate
• 📘 Functional Programming HOWTO — Python Docs Advanced

Exception Handling & Logging

• 📘 Errors and Exceptions — Python Docs Beginner
• 📄 Python Exceptions — Real Python Beginner
• 📘 Logging HOWTO — Python Docs Intermediate
• 📄 Logging in Python — Real Python Intermediate
• 📘 logging — Python Standard Library Reference Advanced

File Handling

• 📘 Input and Output — Python Docs (Ch. 7) Beginner
• 📄 Reading and Writing Files — Real Python Beginner
• 📺 File Objects — Corey Schafer Beginner
• 📘 csv — CSV File Reading & Writing — Python Docs Intermediate
• 📘 sqlite3 — SQLite Database Interface — Python Docs Intermediate

Writing Clean, Modular Code

• 📄 PEP 8 — Style Guide for Python Code Beginner
• 📄 Python Code Quality — Real Python Intermediate
• 📄 Python Application Layouts — Real Python Intermediate
• 📘 typing — Type Hints for Readable Code — Python Docs Intermediate
• 💰 Clean Code in Python — Mariano Anaya (Book) Advanced (Paid)

Problem Solving with Python

• 🎓 HackerRank Python Practice Beginner (Free)
• 🎓 Exercism Python Track Beginner (Free)
• 🎓 CS50P Problem Sets — Harvard Intermediate (Free)
• 🎓 LeetCode — Easy Python Problems Intermediate (Free)

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Module 2: Data Foundation

NumPy

• 📘 NumPy: Absolute Basics for Beginners Beginner
• 📘 NumPy Quickstart Tutorial Beginner
• 📺 NumPy Tutorial for Beginners — freeCodeCamp Beginner
• 📘 Indexing on ndarrays — NumPy User Guide Intermediate
• 📘 NumPy User Guide Intermediate
• 📘 NumPy Reference (full API) Advanced

Pandas

• 📘 10 Minutes to Pandas Beginner
• 📘 Getting Started Tutorials — Pandas Docs Beginner
• 📺 Pandas Tutorials — Corey Schafer Beginner
• 🎓 Kaggle: Pandas Beginner (Free)
• 📘 Group By: split-apply-combine — Pandas Docs Intermediate
• 📘 Merge, Join, Concatenate — Pandas Docs Intermediate
• 💰 Python for Data Analysis — Wes McKinney Advanced (Free to read online)

Data Collection (CSV, Excel, APIs, Databases, Web Scraping)

• 📘 pandas.read_csv — Pandas API Beginner
• 📘 pandas.read_excel — Pandas API Beginner
• 📄 Python Requests Library — Real Python Beginner
• 📘 urllib.request — HTTP & URL Requests — Python Docs Intermediate
• 📄 Web Scraping with BeautifulSoup — Real Python Intermediate
• 📄 Python SQL Libraries — Real Python Intermediate

Data Cleaning & Wrangling

• 📘 Working with Missing Data — Pandas Docs Beginner
• 📘 Duplicate Labels — Pandas Docs Beginner
• 🎓 Kaggle: Data Cleaning Beginner (Free)
• 📘 DataFrame.astype — Data Type Conversion — Pandas API Intermediate
• 📘 Merge, Join, Concatenate — Pandas Docs Intermediate

Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)

• 🎓 Kaggle: Intro to Machine Learning (includes EDA) Beginner (Free)
• 🎓 Kaggle: Data Visualization Beginner (Free)
• 📘 Indexing and Selecting Data — Pandas Docs Intermediate
• 📘 Group By — Pandas Docs Intermediate
• 📘 Pandas Visualization Guide Intermediate

Matplotlib & Seaborn

• 📘 Matplotlib Tutorials Index Beginner
• 📺 Matplotlib Tutorials — Corey Schafer Beginner
• 🎓 Kaggle: Data Visualization Beginner (Free)
• 📘 Seaborn Tutorial Home Intermediate
• 📘 Seaborn API Reference Advanced

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Module 3: Basic Data Pre-processing

Handling Missing Values

• 📘 Working with Missing Data — Pandas Docs Beginner
• 🎓 Kaggle: Data Cleaning — Handling Missing Values Beginner (Free)
• 📘 Imputation of Missing Values — scikit-learn Intermediate

Removing Duplicates

• 📘 Duplicate Labels — Pandas Docs Beginner
• 📘 DataFrame.drop_duplicates — Pandas API Beginner

Outlier Detection and Treatment

• 📘 RobustScaler — scikit-learn (outlier-robust scaling) Intermediate
• 📘 Novelty and Outlier Detection — scikit-learn Intermediate

Encoding Categorical Variables

• 📘 Preprocessing: Encoding Categorical Features — scikit-learn Beginner
• 📘 OneHotEncoder — scikit-learn Intermediate
• 📘 LabelEncoder — scikit-learn Intermediate
• 📘 Categorical Data — Pandas Docs Intermediate

Feature Scaling (Normalization & Standardization)

• 📘 Preprocessing: Standardization & Scaling — scikit-learn Beginner
• 📘 StandardScaler — scikit-learn Intermediate
• 📘 MinMaxScaler — scikit-learn Intermediate
• 📘 RobustScaler — scikit-learn Advanced

Datetime Processing

• 📄 Using Python's datetime Module — Real Python Beginner
• 📘 pandas.to_datetime — Pandas API Beginner
• 📘 Time Series / Date Functionality — Pandas Docs Intermediate

Data Type Correction

• 📘 DataFrame.astype — Pandas API Beginner
• 📘 Categorical Data — Pandas Docs Intermediate

Feature Creation / Transformation

• 🎓 Kaggle: Feature Engineering Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 PolynomialFeatures — scikit-learn Intermediate
• 📘 Group By: transform() — Pandas Docs Intermediate
• 📘 Preprocessing Data — scikit-learn (full overview) Advanced

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Module 4: Math Foundations

Linear Algebra Basics

• 📺 Essence of Linear Algebra — 3Blue1Brown Beginner
• 🎓 Linear Algebra — Khan Academy Beginner (Free)
• 🎓 MIT OCW 18.06SC: Linear Algebra — Gilbert Strang Advanced (Free)
• 💰 Introduction to Linear Algebra — Gilbert Strang (Book) Advanced (Paid)

Statistics Fundamentals

• 🎓 Statistics and Probability — Khan Academy Beginner (Free)
• 📺 Statistics Fundamentals — StatQuest Beginner
• 📺 Bias and Variance — StatQuest Intermediate

Probability Basics

• 🎓 Probability — Khan Academy Beginner (Free)
• 📺 Bayes' Theorem — 3Blue1Brown Intermediate
• 📺 Probability for Machine Learning — StatQuest Intermediate

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Module 5: ML Foundations

Introduction & Types of ML

• 🎓 Google Machine Learning Crash Course Beginner (Free)
• 📺 Machine Learning for Everybody — freeCodeCamp Beginner
• 📘 Supervised Learning — scikit-learn Docs Intermediate
• 💰 Machine Learning Specialization — Andrew Ng / Coursera Intermediate (Paid, can audit free)

Feature Scaling

• 📘 Preprocessing: Standardization — scikit-learn Beginner
• 🎓 Google ML Crash Course: Representation Beginner (Free)

Train/Test Split

• 📘 train_test_split — scikit-learn Beginner
• 🎓 Google ML Crash Course: Training & Evaluation Sets Beginner (Free)

Training, Fine-tuning & Transfer Learning

• 🎓 fast.ai: Practical Deep Learning for Coders Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 Transfer Learning — TensorFlow Guide Intermediate
• 📘 Fine-tuning a Pretrained Model — Hugging Face Advanced

Overfitting vs Underfitting

• 🎓 Google ML Crash Course: Overfitting Beginner (Free)
• 📘 Validation Curves — scikit-learn Intermediate

Bias vs Variance

• 📺 Bias and Variance — StatQuest Beginner
• 📄 Understanding the Bias-Variance Tradeoff — Scott Fortmann-Roe Intermediate

Cross-Validation

• 📺 Cross Validation — StatQuest Beginner
• 📘 Cross-Validation — scikit-learn User Guide Intermediate

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Module 6: ML Core Concepts

Scikit-learn Overview

• 📘 Getting Started — scikit-learn Beginner
• 🎓 Kaggle: Intro to Machine Learning Beginner (Free)
• 📘 scikit-learn User Guide Intermediate
• 🎓 Kaggle: Intermediate Machine Learning Intermediate (Free)

Regression (Linear, Logistic, Decision Tree)

• 📺 Linear Regression — StatQuest Beginner
• 🎓 Google ML Crash Course: Regression Beginner (Free)
• 📺 Logistic Regression — StatQuest Intermediate
• 📘 Linear Models — scikit-learn Intermediate
• 📘 Decision Trees — scikit-learn Intermediate

Classification (Naive Bayes, SVM, Decision Tree)

• 📺 Naive Bayes — StatQuest Beginner
• 🎓 Google ML Crash Course: Classification Beginner (Free)
• 📺 Support Vector Machines — StatQuest Intermediate
• 📘 Supervised Learning — scikit-learn Intermediate

Clustering (K-Means)

• 📺 K-Means Clustering — StatQuest Beginner
• 📘 Clustering — scikit-learn Intermediate

Evaluation Metrics

• 📺 Confusion Matrix, Accuracy, Recall, Precision, F1 — StatQuest Beginner
• 📺 ROC and AUC — StatQuest Intermediate
• 📘 Model Evaluation — scikit-learn Intermediate
• 🎓 Google ML Crash Course: Classification Metrics Beginner (Free)

Cross-Validation

• 📺 Cross Validation — StatQuest Beginner
• 📘 Cross-Validation — scikit-learn Intermediate

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Module 7: Database & Engineering Basics

SQL

• 🎓 SQLZoo — Interactive SQL Tutorial Beginner (Free)
• 🎓 W3Schools SQL Tutorial Beginner (Free)
• 📺 SQL Tutorial for Beginners — freeCodeCamp Beginner
• 🎓 Mode SQL Tutorial Intermediate (Free)
• 🎓 Kaggle: Intro to SQL Intermediate (Free)
• 🎓 CS50 SQL — Harvard Advanced (Free)

Git & GitHub

• 📘 Pro Git Book — Free Online Beginner
• 📺 Git and GitHub for Beginners — freeCodeCamp Beginner
• 🎓 GitHub Skills — Interactive Courses Beginner (Free)
• 📺 Git Tutorials — Corey Schafer Intermediate
• 📘 GitHub Docs — Actions, PR, Issues Intermediate

API Basics (requests, FastAPI CRUD)

• 📄 Python Requests Library — Real Python Beginner
• 📺 APIs for Beginners — freeCodeCamp Beginner
• 📘 FastAPI — Official Tutorial Intermediate
• 📺 FastAPI Full Course — freeCodeCamp Intermediate

CI/CD Pipelines & Docker

• 📘 Docker Get Started Guide Beginner
• 📺 Docker Tutorial for Beginners — freeCodeCamp Beginner
• 📘 GitHub Actions Documentation Intermediate
• 📄 Docker in Python Projects — Real Python Intermediate

Model Inference API (Serving ML Models)

• 📘 FastAPI Tutorial Intermediate
• 📘 TensorFlow: Serving Models (TFX) Advanced
• 📘 BentoML Documentation Advanced

Saving/Loading Models

• 📘 Model Persistence — scikit-learn Beginner
• 📄 Python pickle Module — Real Python Beginner
• 📘 Saving and Loading Models — PyTorch Intermediate
• 📘 Save and Load Models — TensorFlow / Keras Intermediate

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Module 8: Deep Learning

Introduction to Neural Networks

• 📺 Neural Networks — 3Blue1Brown (Playlist) Beginner
• 📺 But what is a neural network? — 3Blue1Brown Beginner
• 🎓 fast.ai: Practical Deep Learning for Coders Intermediate (Free)
• 💰 Deep Learning Specialization — Andrew Ng / Coursera Intermediate (Paid, can audit free)
• 📺 Neural Networks: Zero to Hero — Andrej Karpathy Advanced

CNN (Convolutional Neural Networks)

• 📘 CS231n: CNNs for Visual Recognition — Stanford Intermediate
• 📘 TensorFlow: Convolutional Neural Networks Tutorial Intermediate
• 📘 PyTorch: Training a Classifier (CIFAR-10) Intermediate
• 💰 Convolutional Neural Networks — deeplearning.ai / Coursera Advanced (Paid, can audit free)

RNN (Recurrent Neural Networks)

• 📺 Recurrent Neural Networks — StatQuest Beginner
• 📘 Text Classification with RNN — TensorFlow Intermediate
• 💰 Sequence Models — deeplearning.ai / Coursera Advanced (Paid, can audit free)

LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory)

• 📺 LSTM Networks — StatQuest Beginner
• 📄 Understanding LSTMs — Christopher Olah (Classic post) Intermediate
• 📘 Time Series Forecasting with LSTM — TensorFlow Intermediate
• 📘 PyTorch Sequence-to-Sequence Tutorial Advanced

GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks)

• 📘 Deep Convolutional GAN — TensorFlow Tutorial Intermediate
• 📘 DCGAN Tutorial — PyTorch Intermediate
• 💰 GAN Specialization — deeplearning.ai / Coursera Advanced (Paid, can audit free)

Keras / TensorFlow Basics

• 📘 Keras Getting Started Beginner
• 📘 TensorFlow Tutorials Beginner
• 📺 TensorFlow 2.0 Full Course — freeCodeCamp Intermediate
• 🎓 Intro to TensorFlow for Deep Learning — Udacity Intermediate (Free)

PyTorch Basics

• 📘 PyTorch: Learn the Basics Beginner
• 📘 PyTorch Official Tutorials Beginner
• 📺 PyTorch for Deep Learning — freeCodeCamp Intermediate
• 🎓 fast.ai: Practical Deep Learning (uses PyTorch) Intermediate (Free)
• 📺 Neural Networks: Zero to Hero — Andrej Karpathy Advanced

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Module 9: Natural Language Processing (NLP)

NLP Basics: Tokenization, Stemming & Lemmatization

• 📘 NLTK Book — Ch. 1: Language Processing and Python Beginner
• 🎓 Kaggle: Natural Language Processing Beginner (Free)
• 📄 NLP with spaCy — Real Python Intermediate
• 📘 spaCy: Linguistic Features Intermediate

TF-IDF & Word Embeddings (Word2Vec, GloVe)

• 📘 TF-IDF Term Weighting — scikit-learn Intermediate
• 📄 The Illustrated Word2Vec — Jay Alammar Intermediate
• 📘 GloVe: Global Vectors for Word Representation — Stanford NLP Advanced

Text Preprocessing

• 📘 NLTK Book — Ch. 3: Processing Raw Text Beginner
• 🎓 Kaggle: Natural Language Processing Beginner (Free)
• 📘 spaCy: Processing Pipelines Intermediate
• 💰 Applied Text Mining in Python — Coursera / U of Michigan Intermediate (Paid, can audit free)

N-grams & Bag-of-Words

• 📘 NLTK Book — Ch. 2: Accessing Text Corpora Beginner
• 📘 Text Feature Extraction (CountVectorizer, TfidfVectorizer) — scikit-learn Intermediate

Core NLP Tasks (Classification, Sentiment Analysis, POS Tagging, NER)

• 📄 Sentiment Analysis with NLTK — Real Python Beginner
• 📘 spaCy: Named Entity Recognition Intermediate
• 📘 Text Classification — Hugging Face Advanced
• 💰 NLP Specialization — deeplearning.ai / Coursera Advanced (Paid, can audit free)

Deep Learning for NLP (RNN, LSTM, GRU, Transformers)

• 📄 The Illustrated Transformer — Jay Alammar Intermediate
• 📄 The Illustrated BERT — Jay Alammar Advanced
• 🎓 Stanford CS224N: NLP with Deep Learning Advanced (Free)
• 💰 Sequence Models — deeplearning.ai / Coursera Advanced (Paid, can audit free)

NLP Toolkits (NLTK, spaCy, Hugging Face)

• 📘 NLTK Book (full online book) Beginner
• 📘 spaCy — Usage Documentation Intermediate
• 🎓 Hugging Face NLP Course (official, free) Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 Hugging Face Transformers Documentation Advanced

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Module 10: Generative AI

Transformers & Attention Mechanism

• 📺 But what is a GPT? Visual Intro to Transformers — 3Blue1Brown Beginner
• 📄 The Illustrated Transformer — Jay Alammar Intermediate
• 🎓 Hugging Face NLP Course — Ch. 1: Transformer Models Intermediate (Free)
• 📺 Let's build GPT: from scratch, in code — Andrej Karpathy Advanced
• 📘 Attention Is All You Need (Original Paper) Advanced

Large Language Models (LLMs)

• 🎓 Hugging Face NLP Course — Ch. 2: Using Transformers Beginner (Free)
• 📺 Intro to Large Language Models — Andrej Karpathy Intermediate
• 🎓 DeepLearning.AI Short Courses (LLM topics) Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 Stanford CS324: Large Language Models Advanced

Prompt Engineering

• 📄 Prompt Engineering Guide — DAIR.AI Beginner
• 🎓 Learn Prompting Beginner (Free)
• 🎓 ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers — DeepLearning.AI Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 OpenAI Prompt Engineering Guide Intermediate

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

• 🎓 LangChain: Chat with Your Data — DeepLearning.AI Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 LlamaIndex Documentation Intermediate
• 🎓 Building and Evaluating Advanced RAG — DeepLearning.AI Advanced (Free)

Document Information Extraction

• 📘 Hugging Face: Document Question Answering Intermediate
• 🎓 Building AI Apps with Haystack — DeepLearning.AI Advanced (Free)

Diffusion Models

• 📄 The Illustrated Stable Diffusion — Jay Alammar Beginner
• 🎓 How Diffusion Models Work — DeepLearning.AI Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 Hugging Face Diffusers Documentation Intermediate
• 📘 Annotated Diffusion Model — Hugging Face Blog Advanced
• 📄 What are Diffusion Models? — Lilian Weng Advanced

Multimodal LLMs

• 📘 Hugging Face: Vision Language Models Explained Intermediate
• 🎓 Building Multimodal Search and RAG — DeepLearning.AI Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 Hugging Face: LLaVA — Multimodal Model Advanced

Fine-tuning LLMs

• 🎓 Hugging Face NLP Course — Ch. 3: Fine-tuning Intermediate (Free)
• 🎓 Finetuning Large Language Models — DeepLearning.AI Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 Hugging Face PEFT — Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning Advanced
• 📘 Hugging Face TRL — RLHF & Fine-tuning Advanced

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Module 11: Evaluation, Responsible AI & Monitoring

Model Evaluation Metrics

• 📺 Confusion Matrix, Precision, Recall, F1 — StatQuest Beginner
• 📺 ROC and AUC — StatQuest Beginner
• 📘 Model Evaluation — scikit-learn Intermediate
• 📘 Evaluate Library — Hugging Face (BLEU, ROUGE, etc.) Advanced

Responsible AI (Bias, Fairness, Ethics, Hallucinations, Guardrails)

• 🎓 Intro to AI Ethics — Kaggle Beginner (Free)
• 📘 Google Responsible AI Practices Beginner
• 📘 Microsoft Responsible AI Principles Beginner
• 🎓 Red Teaming LLM Applications — DeepLearning.AI Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 NIST AI Risk Management Framework (PDF) Advanced

Model Monitoring & MLOps

• 🎓 Made With ML — MLOps Course Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 MLflow Documentation Intermediate
• 📘 Evidently AI — ML Monitoring Documentation Intermediate
• 📘 Weights & Biases — MLOps & Experiment Tracking Intermediate
• 🎓 Full Stack Deep Learning — MLOps Course Advanced (Free)

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Module 12: Capstone Projects

House Price Prediction (Regression)

• 🎓 Kaggle: House Prices — Advanced Regression Techniques Intermediate (Free)
• 📄 Stacked Regressions — Top Kaggle Notebook Advanced

Image Classification / Disease Detection (CNN)

• 🎓 Kaggle: Chest X-Ray Images (Pneumonia) Dataset Intermediate (Free)
• 🎓 fast.ai Lesson 1: Image Classification Beginner (Free)
• 📘 TensorFlow: Convolutional Neural Networks Tutorial Intermediate

Customer Churn Prediction (Classification)

• 🎓 Kaggle: Telco Customer Churn Dataset Intermediate (Free)
• 🎓 Kaggle: Intermediate Machine Learning Intermediate (Free)

Stock Price Prediction (Time-Series / LSTM)

• 🎓 Kaggle: Huge Stock Market Dataset Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 Time Series Forecasting with LSTM — TensorFlow Intermediate

Sentiment Analysis System (NLP)

• 🎓 Kaggle: IMDB Dataset of 50K Movie Reviews Beginner (Free)
• 📄 Sentiment Analysis with NLTK — Real Python Intermediate
• 🎓 Hugging Face NLP Course: Text Classification Advanced (Free)

Generative AI Resume Parser & Chatbot (End-to-End GenAI)

• 🎓 LangChain: Chat with Your Data — DeepLearning.AI Intermediate (Free)
• 📘 LlamaIndex: Building a RAG Pipeline Intermediate
• 🎓 Building Applications with Vector Databases — DeepLearning.AI Advanced (Free)
• 📘 Hugging Face: RAG Model Documentation Advanced

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md to add or improve resources.

Quick steps:

1. Fork this repo
2. Add your resource in the correct module/topic section following the existing format
3. Open a Pull Request

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Author

Netra Neupane — Medium · Article

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License

MIT