Who writes this

My day job is Director of Web Development at an education company, and I spent twenty years writing software before that — so I can usually tell a real capability from a demo. I'm not an AI researcher, though. I can't tell you how the model works underneath, and I'll say so rather than bluff.

I guide my own development team through integrating AI utilities, and I’ve found that the biggest hurdle for any team isn't the technology—it’s the lack of structure. Hand people AI with no guidance and they eye it suspiciously. Give them an order of operations... and it clicks.

And they keep using it. That's what surprised me most, and it's why the manager's AI toolkit exists. It's easy to get a team excited for a week. Continued use is the real test, and what gets you there isn't a better tool or a better pitch — it's having a sequence.

Most of what's written about this is either selling you a subscription or written by the people building the models, who forget that the rest of us aren't. This site lives in the gap in between.

What's here

Everything is a version of the same three questions, sorted by who's asking:

• For individualsHow do I use AI safely and usefully at work?
• For managersHow do I roll AI out to my team?
• By taskHow do I use AI for X?

The manager's AI toolkit is the longest thing here — that sequence written out in full, with the templates filled in.

What this isn't

Where I cite research I link the study itself, not the press release about it. And when a statistic comes from a company that sells the thing the statistic is about, I say so — plenty of the research on AI at work is published by firms with something to sell.

Corrections and disagreements are welcome:admin@practicalaiguide.com.