prompting
25 posts
- Five words for the same thing
The jargon is doing less work than it looks.
- SoN 2.30: Which of your AI's rules are still doing a job?
Last week's advice and Anthropic's both hold. The test is one question you can ask about any rule you've written.
- From Custom Code to Conversational Prompts
Who's allowed to build software has changed hands three or four times in a decade. Grok Build is the latest handoff — and the security data on what it produces is not subtle.
- Tell AI What You Want and Who You Are
Two takes on the same idea — the ASD-STE100 controlled-English standard and the i-have-adhd Claude Code skill — on giving your AI a writing system and telling it what you want.
- SoN 2.28: "That's good, how can we make it better?"
When I think about AI and automation, I see an opportunity opening up that goes well beyond the chatbots everyone’s being handed — well beyond…
- Paperwork Shot List
A shot list for the paperwork This week I’ve spent five hours or more in the car, driving between schools to move our kid from one to another for the…
- What I Automate with AI
What I Automate with AI I went looking today for a list of everything I’ve got automated since I started this AI journey back in 2024. Every tool…
- SoN 2.22: How do you choose "the best" AI tool?
How do you choose "the best" AI tool? A friend asked me this week to explain how to use “all the different AI tools” — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, the…
- SoN 2.16: Ask your AI what it can already do (Free Edition)
You don't need more AI tools (Free Edition) Ask your AI what it can already do Last Friday, Maya and I spent an hour delivering a post-lunch…
- SoN 2.15: Ask your AI to Ask You Questions (Free Edition)
Ask Your AI To Ask You Questions (Free) Ask your AI to ask you questions Last Saturday morning I sat down to write the weekly digest for my…
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 10: Same Prompt, Different Model, Worse Results (Free)
Same. Prompt,Different Model, Worse Results Dear Reader, New LLM models drop every few weeks. Features change between updates. The prompting advice…
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 6: The Talking Wrench
Three conversations you should be having with your AI tools Dear Reader, I had coffee with a friend this week — who’s trying to solve a practical…
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 2: The Art of Breaking Things Down
Dear Reader, Last week I introduced the idea of "programming your gaps" — the mental shift from asking "how do I prompt better?" to "what friction in…
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 1: Stop Prompting Better. Start Programming Your Gaps.
Dear Reader, Something shifted over the holidays. Since Claude Code Opus 4.5 launched in November, a pattern has emerged among knowledge workers…
- SoN 30: Four Questions That Fix Your Prompts
November 26th, 2025 Dear Reader, Most prompts fail before you hit enter. Not because of the AI model nor because of token limits or temperature…
- SoN 26: The System of Building Your AI Style Guide
October 29th, 2025 Dear Reader, Last week, I wrote about why your personal voice matters, and how AI can act as an accessibility layer to help your…
- SoN 22: How to Write AI Instructions That Actually Work
October 1st, 2025 Dear Reader, (Psst, this is a long one - so if you can't get through the whole read at once, that's cool - but make sure you scroll…
- GPT-5 Reality Check: Why Your Framework Matters More Than the Latest Model
August 15th, 2025 Dear Reader, Well it’s been a week since release and everyone’s still talking about ChatGPT-5. Most can’t access it, and those…
- How to Spot AI Generated Text
AI should make you more efficient at being yourself, not more efficient at being generic.
- Why Your AI Prompts Aren’t Working (And How to Fix Them)
Prompts are not magical incantations, they're conversations.
- Stop Writing Prompts, Start Building AI Assistants
How to Build AI Assistants That Actually Work for You With the SHAPE Framework
- How to Talk to AI (and Actually Get What You Want)
Stop getting weird AI responses. Learn the PAST framework for writing prompts that actually work. Get clear, useful results every time.
- How to Get the Best Out of ChatGPT: The Art of Effective Prompting
The AI Download #015 March 7th, 2025 Dear Reader, Ever felt like you're getting stuck in circles with ChatGPT (or other chatbots, for that matter)?…
- 💾 The Download #012: AI web search, OpenAI's Whisper, Qwen AI and more.
💾 The Download #012: AI web search, OpenAI's Whisper, Qwen AI and more.
- 💾 The Download #009: A Jim-GPT to make your prompt creation easier, testing OpenAI's text-to-video model and more.
In this issue of The Download: A Jim-GPT to make your prompt creation easier, testing OpenAI's text-to-video model and more.