Build a Claude Code Verification Harness

Oct 8, Reserve a seat
Free to read

Stop freezing on backend tickets

Become the engineer who owns the whole request, not just the screen.

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Message a mentor about fit, prerequisites, or where to start. Replies come on WhatsApp, usually within a day.

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Taught by an engineer who has shipped this

  • ISO 27001

    Led the engineering work behind the certification of a regulated EU platform.

  • Series A platform

    Architected the case-management product that became the business a €11.6M round was raised on.

  • 3x faster deploys

    Cut time-to-deploy by migrating to Kubernetes on GCP with deploy-on-merge.

Become the engineer who can ship the server, not just the screen. Build a real Node, TypeScript, Express, and Postgres backend from your first HTTP server to a production stack with auth, queues, caching, websockets, observability, and Docker. No prior backend experience required. Built around the workshop repo at github.com/learnwithparam/backend-masterclass

Become the engineer who can ship the server, not just the screen.

What you'll ship

Real projects, not toy demos.

  • A REST API in Express with controllers, services, and a Postgres database
  • A login system with JWT, password hashing, and role-based access
  • A background worker that processes jobs and survives crashes
  • A cache layer that knows when to invalidate itself
  • A real-time websocket service with authenticated rooms
  • A multi-service stack you can launch with one docker compose command
  • Structured logging, metrics, and feature flags before anything ships
  • A backend you can actually defend in a code review

What you'll learn

You finish able to:

  • Design and ship REST APIs in Node, TypeScript, and Express
  • Model real data in PostgreSQL with Drizzle and run migrations without panic
  • Implement password hashing, JWT auth, and role-based access
  • Push slow work into background queues that survive crashes, and cache hot responses with the right invalidation strategy
  • Build real-time features over authenticated websockets
  • Instrument a backend with structured logs, metrics, and feature flags
  • Containerize and ship a production stack you can hand to a teammate

Curriculum

From first principles to a production stack you can ship.

  1. 01

    The absolute basics

    Before you serve data, you have to be able to trust it. Build a CLI that reads a messy JSON file and refuses bad records.

  2. 02

    Servers from scratch

    Stand up a real HTTP server, expose a health check, and test it without ever binding a real port.

  3. 03

    REST APIs with Express

    Turn one route into a clean, layered CRUD API where every file has one job.

  4. 04

    Data persistence with Postgres

    Replace the in-memory array with a real database. Same API, durable data.

  5. 05

    Auth and security

    Lock the front door. Hash passwords with bcrypt, issue JWTs, and gate routes by role.

  6. 06

    Professional testing workflows

    Catch regressions before they ship. Real tests, real databases, real isolation.

  7. 07

    Background jobs with BullMQ

    Push slow work out of the request path so customers never wait for the things that can happen later.

  8. 08

    Caching and optimization

    Serve hot reads in under a millisecond and invalidate the cache without losing your mind.

  9. 09

    DDD and functional architecture

    Keep business rules pure, I/O at the edges, and the codebase survivable for the next six months of feature churn.

  10. 10

    Microservices and events

    Split a service without creating a distributed monolith. Events over HTTP, eventual consistency, and data ownership.

  11. 11

    Ship it: Docker and CI/CD

    Package the whole stack so any machine can run it with one command, and block bad code at the door.

  12. 12

    API hardening

    Make your API survive the hostile internet. Pagination, rate limiting, uploads, versioning.

  13. 13

    Realtime WebSockets

    Ship live updates without polling. Authenticated rooms, typed messages, and dead connection cleanup.

  14. 14

    Observability

    See what your backend is doing at 2 AM. Structured logs, health checks, correlation IDs, and graceful shutdown.

  15. 15

    Contracts and resilience

    Publish what your API promises and prove it survives the failure modes you planned for.

  16. 16

    Release engineering

    Deploys should be boring. Feature flags, canaries, rollbacks, and load drills make them that way.

Who it's for

Is this for you?

Frontend engineers

who freeze the moment a feature needs a real server

Self-taught developers

who learned to code on YouTube and now want production-grade depth

CS graduates

with no real exposure to how backends actually run in production

Career switchers

who want one coherent path instead of a bookmark folder of half-finished tutorials

FAQ

Common questions.

  • Do I need any backend experience?

    No. You need basic JavaScript and a terminal. The first lessons assume nothing about servers, databases, or HTTP. Everything is built up from there.

  • Why Node and not Python or Go?

    Because you probably already write JavaScript. Staying in one language lets you focus on the backend ideas, not the syntax. The patterns you learn here transfer directly to any other language.

  • Will this prepare me for production?

    Yes. You build the same shape of stack engineers run at real companies: Express, Postgres with Drizzle, Redis, websockets, Docker, structured logging, feature flags, and contract testing. By the end you can defend every layer.

  • Is this self-paced?

    Yes. Self-paced, included with your Pro subscription. Take it on a weekend or stretch it over a month.