# Introduction Gentle reader, Welcome to this Plutus course. The course aims to teach you the basics of Plutus for Cardano smart contract development. This course will use `PlutusV2` and the latest `cardano-node` version (`8.1.2`). To get the most out of the course, it is recommended to have an understanding of the fundamentals of Haskell and the basic usage of `cardano-cli`. To get started with Haskell, you may want to follow the [Introduction to Haskell video series](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAoT_AQC5nO_2bMR85RJksJgcKlvIRKRQ) or [the GitBook version of the course](https://haskell.hpmeducation.com/). Before starting any practical work with the so-called smart contracts, it is extremely important to have a good understanding of the underlying accounting model used on Cardano - the Extended Unspent Transaction Output model called EUTxO. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://plutus.hpmeducation.com/readme.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.