Curated lists and roadmaps

How to use a listCopy Anchor Link

Other people have already sorted this field into lists. A good list saves you weeks. A bad one is a pile of bookmarks. Judge a list in a minute with four checks:

When was the last update? A list untouched for a year is probably stale. Does each entry say why it is worth reading, or is it just a link? Is it maintained by one person or many? Are paid items marked?

A worked example: judging a listCopy Anchor Link

Open the repository and look at the commit history. If the last change was eleven months ago, treat the links as hints and check each one. Look at ten entries. If seven of them have a sentence about what you will learn, the list is curated. If none do, it is a dump. Pick the best two or three entries in the section you need and ignore the rest.

Which list for which goalCopy Anchor Link

You are new and want an order to follow: the path on this site, then the beginner guides below. You want to build agents: the agentic engineering lists. You want to study the research: the model internals chapter and the papers it cites. You want to keep up weekly: the sources in the previous lesson.

Use this site's libraryCopy Anchor Link

The Resource library page lists every link cited in these lessons, with a sentence on what each one is good for, filterable by type. It is smaller than a giant list and every entry is annotated.

What goes wrong: link rot and repeatsCopy Anchor Link

Open ten random entries on a list. If three lead to an error page, a changed address, or a site that no longer covers the topic, the list is not being maintained. This is link rot, and it grows with age.

A second problem is repetition. Open three lists on the same topic and you often see the same ten resources in each. The real count is not 500 links across three lists. It may be closer to 40 unique ones. To confirm, copy the titles into one document and remove duplicates. The number left is the size of the topic.

Turning a list into a planCopy Anchor Link

A list becomes useful when you add a goal and a limit.

1. Write one goal, such as "build a small agent that calls two tools".
2. Find the section of the list that matches and copy five entries into a notes file.
3. Next to each, write one line on why you picked it.
4. Spend 15 minutes on each. Cross out any that repeat what you already learned.
5. Keep the best two and do them this week.

Five entries become two in about an hour and a quarter. Expect to end with fewer items than you started with. That is the point.

Common mistakeCopy Anchor Link

Saving lists you never open. Pick one, take three items, and read them this week.