Learn JavaScript AI by Chatting With Historical Legends
Microsoft wrapped a JavaScript GenAI curriculum in a time-travel adventure to teach beginners LLMs, RAG, and MCP through interactive fiction.

What it does
The repository is a structured beginner course for JavaScript developers who want to integrate generative AI. It bundles eight written lessons—covering everything from basic prompt engineering to the Model Context Protocol—with quizzes, solutions, a companion app, and an eleven-part video series. The whole thing is framed as a time-travel story where you interact with AI-generated versions of figures like Leonardo da Vinci and Ada Lovelace to make the concepts stick.
The interesting bit
Instead of dry tutorials, the course uses a narrative wrapper—historical characters as chatbot companions—to turn abstract AI concepts into something memorable. It is a deliberate pedagogical bet that chatting with an AI Montezuma will help you remember how RAG works better than a standard slide deck.
Key highlights
- Eight lessons with assignments, quizzes, and solutions, spanning LLM basics through MCP and tool calling.
- A companion app for interacting with AI-generated historical figures, with audio tags for accessibility.
- An eleven-session video series with slides, demo code, and scripts covering extras like LangChain.js, Ollama, and Azure AI Foundry.
- Newly added MCP lessons on building servers and enhancing clients with LLMs.
- Explicitly open-source under MIT, with a call for community translations.
Caveats
- The course is explicitly incomplete; Microsoft notes that new lessons will be added over time.
- All historical character interactions are labeled as fictional AI-generated entertainment, not factual representation.
Verdict
Worth bookmarking if you are a JavaScript developer looking for a structured, low-stakes entry into GenAI concepts. Skip it if you are already shipping production LLM pipelines and just need reference docs.
Frequently asked
- What is microsoft/generative-ai-with-javascript?
- Microsoft wrapped a JavaScript GenAI curriculum in a time-travel adventure to teach beginners LLMs, RAG, and MCP through interactive fiction.
- Is generative-ai-with-javascript open source?
- Yes — microsoft/generative-ai-with-javascript is open source, released under the MIT license.
- What language is generative-ai-with-javascript written in?
- microsoft/generative-ai-with-javascript is primarily written in JavaScript.
- How popular is generative-ai-with-javascript?
- microsoft/generative-ai-with-javascript has 1.2k stars on GitHub.
- Where can I find generative-ai-with-javascript?
- microsoft/generative-ai-with-javascript is on GitHub at https://github.com/microsoft/generative-ai-with-javascript.