Book 2: Building with FCC¶
Level: Intermediate | Chapters: 10 | Words per chapter: 1,500--2,000
Preface¶
Book 1 gave you the mental models. This book puts them to work.
Every chapter in Book 2 follows the same pattern: we state what you will build, show you the code, explain the design decisions behind it, and point you to the tests that verify it works. By the end, you will have a fully configured FCC project with custom personas, a hand-crafted workflow graph, a working simulation pipeline, at least one custom plugin, observable event streams, collaboration sessions with human approval gates, and a CI/CD pipeline that enforces quality gates on every commit.
This is a practical book. If something can be shown in code, it is shown in code. If something requires a design decision, the decision is stated explicitly with its trade-offs. The goal is to make you productive, not to cover every edge case.
Who This Book Is For¶
- Engineers who have read Book 1 (or have equivalent knowledge of FCC concepts)
- Developers building applications that embed the FCC workflow
- Team leads designing custom persona catalogs for their domain
- DevOps engineers setting up FCC in CI/CD pipelines
Prerequisites¶
- Python 3.10+
- FCC package installed (
pip install -e ".[dev]") - Familiarity with the FCC concepts from Book 1 (or the Guidebook, Chapters 1--4)
- A code editor and terminal
Chapter Listing¶
| # | Chapter | Estimated Time | Key Deliverable |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Project Setup | 20 min | Initialized FCC project |
| 2 | Custom Personas | 25 min | Validated R.I.S.C.E.A.R. YAML |
| 3 | Workflow Design | 25 min | Custom workflow graph |
| 4 | Simulation and Traces | 20 min | Mock + AI simulation runs |
| 5 | Plugin Development | 30 min | Working custom plugin |
| 6 | Event Bus and Observability | 25 min | Instrumented pipeline |
| 7 | Collaboration Sessions | 25 min | Human-in-the-loop session |
| 8 | Production Deployment | 25 min | CI/CD with quality gates |
How to Read This Book¶
Each chapter builds on the previous one, but they are also designed to work as standalone references. If you already know how to set up a project and design personas, skip to Chapter 3. If you are specifically interested in plugins, jump to Chapter 5 -- it includes enough context to stand alone.
The companion notebooks provide interactive versions of most code examples. See Book 1, Chapter 8 for the full notebook catalog.