AI Courses: Which One Is Right for You?

AI Courses: Which One Is Right for You?

Reforge's AI courses fall into four groups, so the easiest way to choose is by what you want to do with AI: understand it, use it in your own work, build or lead with it, or grow a product with it.

Quick match

Course snapshots

AI Foundations

Covers the building blocks of AI, from foundation models to multi-agent systems, with a product-focused lens.

Best for: PMs and product builders who want a grounding in AI fundamentals before going deeper.

AI Productivity

Walks through the core PM deliverables and shows how to do each with AI, going deeper than generic prompt libraries. Covers prototyping, customer insights, data insights, product strategy, and product execution.

Best for: PMs and Senior PMs who want to significantly boost their productivity with AI, and Directors, Heads, and VPs of Product who want to accelerate their team's productivity.

AI Prototyping

Use AI-powered prototyping to test concepts and validate assumptions with working software, shipping prototypes in hours instead of weeks. Covers when (and when not) to prototype, software and prototyping fundamentals, best practices, and advanced techniques and tools.

Best for: product builders who want faster ways to test ideas with users. No technical background is needed.

AI Evals

A practical introduction to evaluating AI products: AI PRDs, golden datasets, eval rubrics, trace analysis, and automated evaluators, all tied to an eval-driven roadmap.

Best for: PMs and Senior PMs building (or learning to build) AI features or agents, Directors, Heads, and VPs setting quality standards for their teams, and product leaders updating how they run product reviews.

Not for: people with advanced technical knowledge, such as ML engineers, since it's an introductory course.

AI Strategy

Rethink how you compete and win as AI changes markets, customer problems, product strategy, technical strategy, and team execution. Four modules cover the strategic landscape, market strategy, product strategy, and execution strategy.

Best for: product leaders and builders who want a strategic framework for an AI-powered landscape, whether leading an AI-native product or adapting an existing one.

AI Product Leadership

How AI transforms product strategy, development, go-to-market, team design, and organizational scale, including scaling with agents and building adaptive teams.

Best for: Heads of Product, CPOs, and senior PMs leading AI-native organizations, whether or not they're building AI products.

Not for: anyone who isn't leading a team.

AI Transformation

A playbook for turning your product team into an AI-native organization, organized into four modules: build the system, set the standard, transform the process, and get everyone onboard.

Best for: product leaders (managers, directors, VPs, CPOs) who can implement team-wide change.

AI Growth

Strategic frameworks and mental models for growth in the AI era, with an emphasis on principles over tactics that expire quickly.

Best for: product builders, including founders, PMs, marketers, designers, engineers, and data analysts, as well as growth leaders, marketing leaders, and strategy professionals. No technical AI expertise is required.

Mastering AEO

A practical guidebook for winning in answer engine optimization (AEO).

Best for: product and growth practitioners looking to make as much out of the new AEO landscape as they have the SEO days of yore.

Commonly confused

AI Foundations vs. AI Productivity

Foundations is about understanding AI: how it works and what it means for your role. Productivity is about applying it: using AI day to day to do PM work faster and better.

AI Productivity vs. AI Prototyping

Prototyping is one of five areas inside AI Productivity. Take AI Productivity for a broad toolkit across your whole PM workflow. Take AI Prototyping if building working prototypes is the specific skill you want to go deep on.

AI Productivity vs. AI Transformation

Productivity is for individuals (and managers wanting to speed up their own teams' work). Transformation is for leaders changing how an entire product organization operates, including AI fluency, operating model, and team-wide adoption.

AI Strategy vs. AI Product Leadership vs. AI Transformation

All three are leader-oriented, but they answer different questions:

• AI Strategy: How does AI change what we should build and how we compete?
• AI Product Leadership: How does AI change how I lead, structure teams, and take products to market?
• AI Transformation: How do I get my whole team operating AI-natively?

AI Evals vs. AI Foundations

Foundations covers the core concepts. Evals is a hands-on playbook for one specific skill: measuring and improving AI quality. Evals is introductory, but it's most useful if you're building or planning AI features.

AI Growth vs. Mastering AEO

AI Growth is broad: how growth strategy changes with AI. Mastering AEO is narrow: getting your content and brand surfaced in AI answer engines. For traditional search plus AI search, see Mastering Search & AI Optimization (SEO) in our Growth courses article. [Link to add.]

Suggested paths

• Getting started with AI as a PM: AI Foundations → AI Productivity → AI Prototyping
• Building AI products: AI Foundations → AI Evals → AI Strategy
• Leading an AI-native team: AI Strategy → AI Product Leadership → AI Transformation
• Growing in the AI era: AI Growth → Mastering AEO

Common questions

Do I need a technical background?

Not for most. AI Prototyping and AI Growth explicitly don't require one. AI Evals is introductory but is built for people working on AI features.

Do I need to be building an AI product?

No. AI Growth and AI Product Leadership both apply whether or not your product is AI-based.

Where do the product fundamentals fit?

For core PM skills with AI woven in, see Product Foundations for the AI Era.