I'm new to Android Dev, learned enough kotlin to start a basic project. I'm confused about Jetpack and Compose. What's the difference? Can I start using compose?

I'd just spend some time reading through the docs, they're pretty nice. https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose/documentation

ok, I heard that compose is new, is that production ready?

According to google, yes. They feel it's ready enough for production. See:

With this beta release, Compose is API complete and has all the features you need to build production-ready apps.

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/02/announcing-jetpack-compose-beta.html "Jetpack" is the umbrella term for libraries that help you develop fast on android. They basically paper over 10 years of tech debt and things that are hard to do. Compose (technically Jetpack Compose) falls under that umbrella and basically let's you write UIs super fast and with less issues. e.g. a list doesn't take 200 lines anymore. It takes like 6.

Ok then I will try compose.