Training course · Windsurf · AI Engineering & LLM Applications

Windsurf for AI Engineers

Develop with the Windsurf AI IDE and its Cascade agent: flows, memories, rules, workflows and safe use across the team.

Duration
2 days (14 hrs)
Format
Online or on-site
Language
German or English
Participants
open dates or exclusive for your team
Certificate
Certificate of attendance

Overview

This course connects Windsurf with the everyday processes of AI Engineering & LLM Applications. Participants work on realistic scenarios and leave with prompts, workflows and checklists they can use straight away.

Windsurf is an AI-powered development environment built around its agent, Cascade. Cascade understands the structure of your project, follows your actions in the editor and terminal, and works with you according to the flow principle: you and the agent take turns on the same task without having to re-explain context over and over. In this two-day course you will learn how to use Cascade effectively for features, debugging and refactoring, and how to make the most of intelligent completion in your daily development work.

To keep results consistent across a team, you steer Cascade with global and workspace rules, rely on memories for lasting project knowledge and automate recurring procedures with workflows that run from a slash command. You will connect external tools through MCP, control how terminal commands are executed and decide which data Cascade is allowed to see. Finally, you will define rules for code review, security and data protection so that Windsurf can be used responsibly within your organisation and its existing processes.

AI engineering is the discipline of turning language models into dependable products: chat assistants, document analysis, retrieval-augmented generation, agents with tool access and AI features inside existing applications. The code around the model is often more demanding than the model call itself, because prompt versioning, structured output, evaluation, cost control, latency, observability and protection against prompt injection decide success in production. AI coding assistants and agents accelerate exactly this work, from building evaluation pipelines and tool definitions to MCP servers and root-cause analysis in traces. In this course you learn to develop LLM applications systematically with AI support, make their quality measurable and run them securely, cost-effectively and in compliance with regulation.

The course is delivered live – either online in a virtual classroom or on-site in our training rooms in Munich, Salzburg, Berlin, Augsburg, Hanover, Bremen, Stuttgart and Kaiserslautern. We can also run it exclusively for your team.

Who is this course for?

  • Software developers integrating LLM features into products
  • AI engineers and machine learning engineers
  • Data scientists focusing on generative AI
  • Backend and platform teams providing AI infrastructure
  • Technical product owners for AI features

Typical challenges we address

  • Prototypes shine in demos but deliver inconsistent quality in production
  • Without systematic evaluation, changes to prompts and models are risky
  • Costs, latency and rate limits spiral as usage grows
  • New security risks from prompt injection, data leakage and over-privileged agents

What you will be able to do

  • You use Cascade productively in flow for features, debugging and refactoring.
  • You steer Windsurf’s context precisely and keep sensitive content protected.
  • You maintain memories and rules that reliably enforce your project conventions.
  • You automate recurring procedures with workflows and connect external tools via MCP.
  • Build RAG applications, agents and LLM features with AI coding tools systematically and to production standard.
  • Make the quality of LLM applications measurable and manageable with automated evaluations.
  • Run LLM applications securely and cost-effectively, with observability, prompt injection defences and clear permissions.

Course outline

Day 1

Module 1 Getting to know Windsurf and Cascade
  • Installation, importing existing editor settings and basic configuration
  • Cascade in code and chat mode: when the agent edits and when it only advises
  • The flow principle: how Cascade takes your editor and terminal actions into account
  • Intelligent completion and inline commands in everyday development
Module 2 Steering context
  • Understanding codebase indexing and referencing relevant files or directories
  • Bringing documentation, web sources and terminal output into context
  • Excluding sensitive content from context with ignore files
  • Structuring sessions and starting afresh when the topic changes
Module 3 Memories and rules for consistent results
  • Reviewing and maintaining auto-generated and manually created memories
  • Creating and versioning global and workspace rules
  • Expressing architecture, style and testing guidelines as effective rules
  • Activating rules selectively by file pattern or occasion
Module 4 Workflows and automation
  • Defining recurring procedures as workflows and launching them via slash command
  • Building workflows for release preparation, testing or code maintenance
  • Connecting MCP servers for issue trackers, databases or internal services
  • Controlling terminal command execution with allow and deny lists

Day 2

Module 5 Quality, review and governance
  • Tracing Cascade’s changes, accepting them partially or reverting them
  • Using a test-driven approach and preview features for verification
  • Team settings, data protection options and handling of secrets
  • Defining review processes and accountability for AI-generated code
Module 6 Practice lab: AI Engineering & LLM Applications
  • Building RAG pipelines
  • Automating evaluation
  • Developing agents and tools
  • Securing structured output
  • Observability and cost
  • Defending against prompt injection
Module 7 Data protection, quality & transfer to daily work
  • LLM applications often process personal and confidential data: you learn to assess EU AI Act requirements on transparency and risk classes, design GDPR-compliant data flows with processing agreements and deletion policies, manage API keys securely and respect the licence terms of models and datasets.
  • Ground rules for safe AI use in your team
  • Checking results: facts, sources, tests and the four-eyes principle
  • Personal action plan for the next 30 days
  • Open questions, outlook and resources for further learning

Practical scenarios from your field

Building RAG pipelines

Implement ingestion, chunking, embeddings, vector search, hybrid retrieval and reranking, and generate answers with citations while honouring the access rights of source documents at retrieval time.

Automating evaluation

Create test sets with expected answers, define metrics for relevance, faithfulness and format, calibrate LLM-as-a-judge scoring and run evaluations in CI on every prompt or model change.

Developing agents and tools

Design tool definitions and MCP servers, implement agent loops with planning, tool calls and stop conditions, and build in permissions and human approval for consequential actions.

Securing structured output

Define JSON schemas for model responses, validate output, implement retry strategies on failure and make extraction tasks such as invoice or contract data robust. Faulty responses never reach downstream systems.

Observability and cost

Capture traces, token usage, latency and error rates, analyse problematic conversations and cut costs through caching, model routing and context reduction. Budgets and alerts per feature prevent surprises.

Defending against prompt injection

Test attack scenarios via manipulated documents, web pages or tool results, filter inputs and outputs, limit agent permissions and make red-teaming tests a fixed part of the pipeline.

Possible hands-on projects

Knowledge assistant with sources

A RAG chat over internal documents with citations, feedback buttons and an evaluation page that tracks answer quality across test questions.

Evaluation harness

A command-line tool that runs prompt variants against a test set, scores the results and clearly shows differences between versions.

Document extractor

A service that accepts PDFs, extracts structured data against a JSON schema, validates it and flags uncertain cases for manual review.

Prerequisites

You program regularly in at least one language and are familiar with Git and a modern IDE. You have solid programming skills, ideally in Python or TypeScript, and experience with APIs; prior exposure to LLM APIs helps but is not required.

Technical requirements

Your own laptop with the Windsurf editor, Git and your usual toolchain installed; a Windsurf account with access to Cascade is required.

Data protection & compliance

LLM applications often process personal and confidential data: you learn to assess EU AI Act requirements on transparency and risk classes, design GDPR-compliant data flows with processing agreements and deletion policies, manage API keys securely and respect the licence terms of models and datasets.

Suggested dates

All dates are suggestions – your preferred date is always possible.

  • Wed, 25 November 2026 – Thu, 26 November 2026 Online Request
  • Tue, 8 December 2026 – Wed, 9 December 2026 Bremen Request
  • Thu, 14 January 2027 – Fri, 15 January 2027 Salzburg Request
  • Thu, 21 January 2027 – Fri, 22 January 2027 Online Request
  • Thu, 28 January 2027 – Fri, 29 January 2027 Kaiserslautern Request
  • Wed, 10 February 2027 – Thu, 11 February 2027 Online Request

Frequently asked questions

What does Windsurf mean by flows?

Flows describe the close collaboration between you and Cascade. The agent observes what you do in the editor and terminal and takes those actions into account in its next steps. As a result you do not have to keep explaining where you are, and you can move smoothly between doing the work yourself and delegating it to the agent.

How do memories, rules and workflows differ?

Memories store knowledge that Cascade has gathered while working or that you have explicitly recorded. Rules are guidelines you write that shape the agent’s behaviour permanently. Workflows are reusable sequences of steps for recurring tasks, launched with a slash command. Together they keep results consistent across the whole team.

Can I use Windsurf with my existing projects and languages?

Yes. Windsurf is language-agnostic and works with your existing toolchain, including build tools, package managers and test frameworks. Whether you work on back end, front end, data processing or infrastructure code, what matters is giving Cascade good rules and clear context. Each course variant adds the specific focus for your field.

How does AI engineering differ from classic machine learning?

In classic machine learning you train your own models on your own data. In AI engineering you usually work with pre-trained language models via APIs or self-hosted models and focus on context, retrieval, tools, evaluation and operations. Statistics and training know-how matter less, while software engineering skills matter all the more. That is precisely where this course comes in.

How do we know whether our LLM application is good enough?

With an evaluation set of realistic questions and expected results, a mix of rule-based checks, LLM-as-a-judge and human spot checks, plus monitoring in production. The key is running evaluations automatically on every change. In the course you build such a setup and learn to calibrate judge models.

How much does “Windsurf for AI Engineers” cost?

The course costs a flat €949 plus VAT per participant – whether online or on-site. This includes 2 training day(s) with a live trainer, course materials, a lab environment and a certificate of attendance.

Can I suggest my own date?

Yes. Our suggested dates are just a guide. In the request form you can always describe your preferred date or period in free text – we check availability and confirm within one working day.

Is the course online or on-site?

Both are possible: live online in a virtual classroom or on-site in Munich, Salzburg, Berlin, Augsburg, Hanover, Bremen, Stuttgart or Kaiserslautern. We can also run the course exclusively for your team.

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