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.
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 ways are how you work with AI. Organising the work in the first place is the job of the shape+build+launch framework, a practical way to move a piece of work through three phases, Shape then Build then Launch, across 27 ideas. Each idea ends in a move you make with AI and points back to the ways above, so the framework organises the work and these ways are how you do it with AI.
In plain words
In plain words: this page is a map, not a lesson. It points you to the separate skills of working with AI, laid out roughly in the order you use them, so you can pick the one that matches what you are doing right now and start there. AI here means a tool you direct in plain language, and Claude is the particular one used in the examples.