Engineer, builder, teacher.
In that order.
David Stillson — Founder, Vibe AI Academy
The Story
I've been writing software professionally for over 20 years. Not as a side hobby — as my job. Databases, APIs, deployment pipelines, ecommerce systems. I started building before AI was a buzzword, back when "machine learning" meant maintaining a spreadsheet model and calling it a day.
Then everything changed. I watched AI go from a lab curiosity to a genuine force in production software — and I watched most of the education industry completely miss the point. Too theoretical, too shallow, or too focused on demos that never ship. I've spent years closing that gap for myself and my clients. Vibe AI Academy is how I close it for everyone else.
I don't teach theory. I teach what I've actually built and shipped.
Real work, real results
What I Actually Build
Production REST APIs & Microservices
Designed and shipped high-traffic APIs for ecommerce and SaaS. Auth, rate limiting, versioning — the works.
AI Agents & Automation Workflows
Multi-step agents that scrape, reason, and act. LangChain, custom tool-calling, real business logic.
Ecommerce Platforms & Optimizations
20+ years selling and building online. Performance, conversion, and backend architecture from scratch.
Custom GPTs & AI Integrations
Embedded AI into existing apps — customer support bots, internal knowledge tools, automated pipelines.
Team Training & AI Strategy
Helped organizations cut through the noise, pick the right tools, and actually ship AI in their workflows.
Philosophy
Why Build a School?
Most AI education is either too academic or too shallow. Too many courses are recorded slide decks or five-minute YouTube tutorials dressed up as curricula. I wanted something in between: practical, project-driven, and community-based — where you ship something in your first session and keep building from there.
Vibe AI Academy runs on Skool — not a 50k-lurker Discord where questions go unanswered. A focused space where you know the people, get real feedback, and move fast. I built two tracks because developers and builders need fundamentally different things, and trying to serve both with one curriculum just waters everything down.
This isn't a course dump. It's a living community. It grows as AI grows, and so do you.
Work together
Need hands-on AI work for your organization?
I take on a small number of consulting engagements each quarter — strategy, implementation, or team training.