Interactive Lessons
Chinilla has interactive, guided lessons that run right inside the workspace. Each lesson loads a starter (or blank) canvas with a coffee shop theme, walks you through one idea step by step, and gives you a badge when you finish. Finish every lesson in a module and you get a certificate.
Open lessons from the Learn page.
How lessons work
Section titled “How lessons work”- Open a lesson from the Learn page.
- The workspace loads with a pre-set canvas and locked tools (so you can focus on what matters).
- Follow the instructions panel on the left, one step at a time.
- Hit the goal (run a sim, add some blocks, find the bottleneck, etc.).
- Earn a badge and move to the next lesson.
Your progress saves on its own. Close the browser, come back, pick up where you left off.
Module 1: Using the Chinilla workspace
Section titled “Module 1: Using the Chinilla workspace”Difficulty: Beginner
Learn every feature of the workspace by doing. Seven lessons that take you from zero to confident, using a coffee shop as your running example.
| Lesson | Title | What you learn | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1A | Walking around | Layout, panning, zooming, tooltips, sidebar tabs | Explorer |
| 1B | Adding blocks | Click or drag to drop blocks, the setup window, arranging things | Builder |
| 1C | Connecting blocks | Drawing lines, line labels, direction | Wired |
| 1D | Setting behavior | The block editor, rate, capacity, behavior modes | Tuner |
| 1E | Running a sim | Play controls, item flow, scrubbing the timeline, the N picker | Operator |
| 1F | Reading the Overview | Overview tab, drops, bottlenecks, delivered vs. lost | Analyst |
| 1G | Build challenge | A free-form quiz: build a working coffee shop from scratch using a checklist | Builder |
Certificate: “Chinilla IDE Certified” once you finish all seven.
Module 2: System Design Fundamentals (coming soon)
Section titled “Module 2: System Design Fundamentals (coming soon)”Difficulty: Intermediate
Learn the core ideas of system design by playing with the simulator. All lessons use a coffee shop theme to keep things concrete.
| Lesson | Title | What you learn | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2A | What’s a bottleneck? | Spotting the slowest link, fixing rate mismatches | Detective |
| 2B | Queues and backpressure | Waiting lines, capacity limits, what happens when they overflow | Buffer |
| 2C | Backups and failover | Circuit breaker pattern: fail fast, cool down, recover | Shield |
| 2D | Scaling out | Hiring more baristas, splitting work, round-robin | Scaler |
| 2E | Speed vs. throughput | Express lane vs. batch brewing tradeoffs | Speedometer |
| 2F | Monitoring | Finding hidden failures with Overview, Console, Stability | Monitor |
Module 3: Build your first system (coming soon)
Section titled “Module 3: Build your first system (coming soon)”Difficulty: Advanced
Design a real system from scratch, graded by the stability engine.
| Lesson | Title | What you do | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3A | The brief | Build a full system from a requirements doc | Architect |
| 3B | Stress test it | Push your system to N=20 and fix what breaks | Stress Tested |
| 3C | Design review | Get an AI architecture review of your design | Reviewed |
Badges
Section titled “Badges”Every lesson gives a badge. Badges show up on your Learn page and on your certificate. 15 badges total across the three modules.
Certificates
Section titled “Certificates”Finish every lesson in a module and you get a certificate. Certificates show your display name, the completion date, and a unique verification ID. You can export them as a PNG.
Progression
Section titled “Progression”- Lessons in a module go in order.
- Modules unlock one after another (Module 2 needs Module 1 finished).
- You can replay any lesson after finishing it.
- No time limits.