AI Best Practices

Get more out of any assistant

Small changes to how you ask, drawn from using these tools every day. Each note takes about a minute to read.

Give the model context before you ask

That confidence percentage means nothing

Don't trust its account of its own thinking

One shot rarely beats three small ones

Not every task deserves your best model

Let it say "I don't know"

Replace "does this feel right" with a rubric

The prompt that worked once is worth saving

A table is easier to check than a paragraph

Long and confident isn't the same as right

Say it before you type it

Make the model show its assumptions

Your instructions and your content aren't the same thing

A derailed conversation doesn't fix itself

You're probably still using AI in a browser tab

Check whether your data is training the next model

Detection is moving from guesswork to a built-in check

Ten habits that give AI writing away