Working with AI
Working with AI well is a craft, not a single trick. This is the map of it: the ways of working with AI across the life of a piece of work, how those same moves land in the tool, and the soft skills underneath. Some pages are fuller than others for now, with more still to come.
Say it another way
In plain words: getting good results from AI is a set of skills, not one magic trick. This page is the map of those skills, set out roughly in the order you use them, from working out what you actually want, to building it, to keeping it running once people rely on it. Each skill has its own page. Start wherever matches what you are doing right now.
The ways of working with AI
Six ways of working with AI, each explained in plain terms, roughly in the order a piece of work moves through it. Each is its own page.
| Get to a sharp answerTurn a vague request into a clear brief you can act on. | Live |
| Build it with AIChoose how to build, based on how big or risky the change is. | Live |
| Make the output trustworthyCheck what AI gives you until it is something you can stand behind. | Growing |
| Build an AI agentSet up AI to run tools and take steps on its own, inside limits you set. | Growing |
| Run it for realKeep a live system reliable once real people depend on it. | Live |
| Set AI up to helpGive AI your project's rules and context so it works the way you do. | Growing |
Doing it in the tool
The same moves, gathered by what you are doing with the tool: Working with Claude.
Designing the system
The structure underneath the craft: how the work runs, what it can reach, and where it is hosted. Designing the system.
The soft skills underneath
The human habits that make all of it work: The soft skills of working with AI.
Getting the work organised
These two fit together as a route and how you drive it. The shape+build+launch framework is the route: a practical way to move a piece of work through three phases, Shape then Build then Launch, across 27 ideas, walked front to back once per project. The ways above are how you drive. They are not a sequence. You use the same one many times over. Getting an ask sharp happens all through Shape. Checking output you can stand behind happens in Build and again after launch.
Every one of the 27 ideas ends in a move you make with AI. Each now names the single way that move needs, so you can go straight from the decision in front of you to the practice that carries it out.
One deliberate exception. Building an agent is not one of the 27. Handing AI a goal to run on its own is a technique you might reach for inside almost any idea rather than a decision the framework asks you to make, so it sits outside the route on purpose. Ways to build an AI agent covers it in its own right.