Prerequisites

00:00 Before you start, there are a couple of prerequisites you’ll want to make sure you meet. First off, you need some Python knowledge to be able to follow along this course or to make the most out of this course.

00:11 You don’t need to be an expert, but if you’re at the very early beginner stage, that’s going to make it harder for you to follow along because you will be writing a couple of classes, and you will write a couple of Python functions, and you’ll use a decorator or two.

00:29 So if these things sound familiar, then that should be enough. Otherwise, you’ll want to make sure you at least read up on them a little bit so that you can write the code for the course.

00:40 The second thing you’re going to need is an API key from a major LLM provider. Now, what constitutes a major LLM provider is a bit ambiguous, so go ahead and check the Pydantic documentation on what LLM providers they support.

00:56 Obviously, if you have an API key from Google or OpenAI or Anthropic, that’s going to work. But if you’re not sure, go to pydantic.dev/docs/ai/models/overview, and there you will find an exhaustive list of all of the providers that Pydantic AI can be used with. If you don’t have an API key from any provider, and if you have a Google account or are willing to get one, you can get a free Gemini API key from aistudio.google.com/api-keys.

01:32 The API key for Gemini has a free tier that is enough for the demonstrations and for the examples from this course. Once you have the API key at hand, you can move on to the next lesson.

01:46 We’re going to set up Pydantic AI.