Setup

Everything runs in the browser. Do this before session 1.

Nothing is installed on your laptop. You need a Google account, a chat assistant, and — from week 4 — one key.

1. Google account and Colab

Google Colab is the runtime for all the code in this course. Any Google account works; the free tier is enough for the whole term.

Every session notebook opens from the course site with the Colab ↗ link. Then File ▸ Save a copy in Drive: from that moment the copy is yours.

2. Your course folder

  1. In Google Drive, create a folder named ese-ai-fintech and share it with the tutor.
  2. One sub-folder per week: week-01/, week-02/, …, and later capstone/.
  3. Your session notebooks and your homework go there. That folder is what gets read and assessed.

Before handing anything in: Runtime ▸ Restart and run all. A notebook that runs top to bottom from a clean start, with no errors, is the minimum.

3. An LLM API key — from week 4

From session 4 the notebooks call a language model from Python. The default is the Google AI Studio free tier, with OpenAI-compatible code so it ports to other providers.

  1. Create a key at aistudio.google.com.
  2. In Colab, open the key icon in the left sidebar (Secrets), add a secret named GEMINI_API_KEY, paste the key, and enable notebook access.
  3. Never paste a key into a notebook cell. Keys live in Colab Secrets only; the notebooks read them from there.

An OpenAI or Anthropic key is optional, for comparison in weeks 4–5.

4. A chat assistant

Pick one — ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini — and use it openly and constantly. The skill this course builds is directing it, reading its output and catching its errors.

Two rules apply from the first day:

  • No confidential, personal or commercially sensitive data goes into an AI service.
  • Every submission includes an AI-use disclosure: which tools, for what, and how the outputs were verified.

Data sources you will use

All free tiers, no sign-up unless stated: yfinance, CoinGecko, FRED, DefiLlama, Etherscan and Dune (account), SEC EDGAR for filings. Notebooks fall back to a saved snapshot when a live source is down.

Something is not working?

Write on the course channel with a screenshot of the error and the cell that produced it. Reading the error message before asking is already half of the course.