Meet Mentor AI: Your Personal Python Mentor

00:00 If you want to become skilled in AI, Python is the perfect language to give you ground knowledge. And as it turns out, AI is also perfect to give you ground knowledge in Python.

00:11 Now, there is one problem if you’re using AI to learn Python, because on one day, ChatGPT might say this, and on the other day, it might say something completely different.

00:24 And that’s depending on the resources that ChatGPT or Claude or whatever AI you’re using to learn Python is finding for this session. So that’s why we at Real Python put our heads together to find a solution to find the perfect Python and AI environment to help you learn Python.

00:42 And in this video, I will show you how. And at the end of this video, I will share a link with you where you can try out this new way of learning Python for yourself.

00:51 Before we dive in deeper and I show you our tool, let’s paint the picture for a moment. Let’s say you are me and you want to learn about uv. One great idea when you want to learn a new topic in general is really dive into the topic and try to absorb as many resources as possible.

01:10 And of course, at Real Python, we got you covered on that. You can find written tutorials. You can find video courses. There are also quizzes. And then there are interactive exercises.

01:23 And last but not least, we also got a podcast which also covers a bunch of topics. As amazing as all of that is, I probably don’t need to tell you that all this information can also be a little bit overwhelming, because although you know there are all these resources, it’s usually not clear in which order you should read them.

01:43 And sometimes your skill level doesn’t match the resource you find. And then there is always this risk of hitting a wall and getting stuck and you don’t really know how to proceed from there.

01:56 So with our new AI tool, we want to show you a way out and a way through all of that so you can succeed in your Python and AI learning journey. Follow me along while I use uv as an example to show you how you can leverage the tool in order to streamline your learning journey.

02:14 When you’re on realpython.com, you will now see this little magical bubble on the lower right that you can click to open Mentor AI. So that’s our new AI tool to help you learn Python.

02:26 When you click this bubble, a chat opens. And at the start, I have to admit, it looks like any random AI chat, you know. But let me show you how powerful this is.

02:35 Let’s say I want to learn about uv. Then I can ask Mentor AI to give me all the resources that Real Python has to learn about uv. Once you send a message, Mentor AI will go into the Real Python content and discover all the content pieces.

02:53 So this can be tutorials that are written or video courses where you can watch something, podcast episodes, quizzes and so on. Now, Mentor AI already ordered the resources for us.

03:05 So you can see that there is a resource about managing Python projects with uv, an all-in-one solution. And that is a tutorial we created, which is our overview tutorial about uv.

03:17 And once you hover over the link, you see all the features that we usually have on our Real Python website, a little preview of the tutorial. And if you scroll down, you see that there is a reference term link.

03:29 And if you hover over that one, you can see a description about the uv term. So uv is a Rust-based command line tool for Python package and project management.

03:38 If you click that link, the page opens with the tutorial. And the nice thing is that Mentor AI stays on your site. And when you want to focus on the tutorial, of course, you can minimize Mentor AI in order to have the normal reading experience on the Real Python page.

03:55 But the nice thing with Mentor AI is that it’s kind of like your little learning buddy on the site. So while you’re reading through the tutorial, you can ask Mentor AI questions about the page you’re on.

04:06 So for example, to give you a quick summary about the sections. So once you send your message, Mentor AI has a look at the page you’re on and then responds to your message with the context of the page you’re in.

04:20 Here you see that the tutorial is structured with getting to know uv, then how to install it, and then handling Python projects with uv and so on. So it’s always a good idea to chat with Mentor AI while you’re on the tutorial.

04:34 But there is another way you can interact with Mentor AI. If you see something on the page that you want to have further information, you can just mark that text and then click the Ask Mentor AI about this button.

04:47 And then the text you highlighted will be added to Mentor AI. So for example, here I can now ask about the difference between curl and wget. Note that I don’t say curl and wget because Mentor AI will take this information from the context.

05:04 So that way you can get even a little tutorial about curl and wget while you’re on the uv tutorial. And that is something that is really important for us at Real Python because we know you learn about some topic like uv, but then there might be information bits where you’re like, wait a second, I have no idea what curl and wget is.

05:24 And that’s when Mentor AI can jump in and give you this additional knowledge that you might not find in the tutorial. So you can highlight text and send the highlighted text directly to Mentor AI.

05:35 Another way of sending content to Mentor AI is when you’re in a code block, you see the Mentor AI icon. And once you click the icon, you see a little pop up menu that shows you questions that you might have.

05:49 So for example, you are wondering why the code is written that way or you want to walk through this code. Here I will select Explain this to this Python code snippet.

06:00 And once you click that, Mentor AI immediately checks this code and then gives you a short explanation. If you have a question that’s a bit out of context for what you’re doing right now, you can click the plus in order to create a new conversation.

06:15 So for example, you want to know a little bit more about the background of uv. For example, who created uv and when. So at this point, Mentor AI again checks if they can find the information on the page.

06:29 But if they can’t find the information on Real Python, they will also check the official documentation of Python or the tool at hand or Wikipedia. So as you saw, Mentor AI really did the research and it came back with a nice little explanation that uv was created by Astral in February 2024.

06:48 And then you can see that we even had the creator of uv in a podcast episode. So let’s jump to the podcast and explore that next. Once I’m on the podcast page, I can interact with Mentor AI exactly the same way.

07:04 So for example, here, Ruff is mentioned. So I can highlight parts of the title and then ask an additional question to the context of the highlight. What exactly is Ruff?

07:15 And here again, you get a quick overview about Ruff. Ruff is a Python code quality tool. And as it turns out, it’s from the same company. To explore the podcast a little bit more, I minimize Mentor AI, scroll down to see what’s in there.

07:29 So there is a description and there are the chapter markers from the podcast. The chapter markers are cool because you can then jump exactly to the position of the podcast episode.

07:41 And Mentor AI can also help you with that. To open up Mentor AI again, click the bubble, then the chat opens, and then you can ask, for example, something like this.

07:51 Does the creator of uv talk about why uv was written in Rust? And once you send this message, Mentor AI will check this podcast episode and try to find information about this specific topic in the episode.

08:06 And there you can then actually see the times when Charlie is addressing this topic. So you can really surgically listen to podcast episodes and the parts that you’re interested in.

08:18 So let’s take this to another level. It’s cool to hear the creator talk about uv, but I’m wondering if there are other Python podcast episodes that talk about uv.

08:28 So let’s ask Mentor AI. And sure enough, there are a few episodes popping up. I can click the copy icon in order to save this content for later. So I can copy it into my notes application, for example, and then come back to these podcast episodes once I’m ready to listen to them.

08:48 But for now, I want to jump back into the tutorial that I was reading, and I could use the browser in order to navigate to the tutorial. But I can also use the history of Mentor AI to go to the chat that I was in before and there, ask Mentor AI for the URL of this tutorial.

09:09 And then you get a nice link that you can click. So if you’re lazy like me, you can also use Mentor AI to navigate through Real Python. So far, you’ve used Mentor AI in order to find resources and get them in an order to consume them.

09:24 And you use Mentor AI to give you additional information once you hit a roadblock when you didn’t understand what exactly wget and curl was and what the difference was.

09:33 The last thing I want to show you about Mentor AI today is how you can use it in order to find content that matches your skill level. To find resources that match my skill level, I will start a new conversation by clicking the plus button and then ask the following.

09:49 For example, please organize all your resources that you can find based on the skill level they require. And then you can even add your preferences to it.

09:58 For example, personally, I like to learn with video courses the most. With a query like this, Mentor AI also checks your learning activity and puts into consideration what tutorials on Real Python you already read, what quizzes you took and so on.

10:13 So your whole learning journey of Real Python is taken into the context of the result that Mentor AI brings back to you. That shows you Mentor AI takes all of this into consideration in order to give you the best resources that you need at this exact moment.

10:29 Obviously, I’m a bit biased, but I really love how many resources Real Python has about any given topic about Python and AI. And there were a bunch of content dropped to me, but put into context about the skill level.

10:44 So this is pretty nice. So you can find exercises and quizzes, everything in order to really get skilled in uv. But since I was mentioning that I really like to learn with video resources, Mentor AI focuses on that.

10:58 However, there is a nice little detail. Although I said that I would like to watch video courses, it told me, you know what, Philipp, I think you should first finish the written piece and then continue to watch the video tutorial.

11:13 And that is a bit different to some other AI tools that you might know, because it doesn’t talk you into the way that the user likes it, but it has a real didactic approach telling you like, hey, you should first finish that and then you can continue with something else.

11:29 So once I’ve read the tutorial on uv, I can continue my learning journey by watching the video course. To not be distracted, I can minimize Mentor AI or even move it out of the way and put it to sleep for a moment to really focus on the video course.

11:46 So now I can watch the video course, I can jump around in the video course, just like I usually would. But I know that Mentor AI is always there if there is something which I’m confused about.

11:59 So let’s open Mentor AI up again,

12:03 start a new conversation, although I could continue the one I was in already, and then have something like, wait, what did the instructor just say? Although we have the full transcription on the page that you can read as well, you can use Mentor AI in order to repeat what the instructor just said.

12:19 And it can even give you a bit more context on that. Or you can use that timestamp in order to jump at this point in the video course. So here, for example, Rodrigo, the instructor of this video course, was saying that uv automatically initializes a git repository and created a gitignore file.

12:38 And if you’re wondering what a gitignore file is, for example, you can just continue this conversation. And that way, you can really leverage this bits of interest or this knowledge block moments that you might have when you’re learning about something without losing the context of a video that you’re watching, for example.

12:58 And once you’re ready to continue watching, again, you can minimize Mentor AI, go into full screen and continue watching. And that’s all I wanted to show you today about Mentor AI.

13:08 To be honest, it’s only scratching the surface. So I haven’t even talked about quizzes and exercises and how Mentor AI helps you with that. So let me know if you’re curious about this, and I’m happy to create a video about that for you.

13:20 But for now, coming back to my promise, if you want to give Mentor AI a try, then follow this link that you’re seeing on the screen right now and you can try out Mentor AI yourself.

13:31 Thanks for watching today and see you at realpython.com using Mentor AI.