Episode 1

Where to actually start with AI

This is the companion guide to the video. It has the exact prompt, a breakdown of how to fill it in, and three worked examples you can copy and adapt. If you have not watched yet, start there.

Episode 1Watch on YouTube

The one idea

You are not adopting AI. You are automating one task. Pick a task you personally do every week that is low stakes, then give the AI four things:

Goal. Exactly what a finished result contains. Not “summarize this.”
Context. Your role, your projects, your people, how your team talks. This is the part people skip, and it matters most.
Guardrails. What it must not do. Do not invent, do not guess, keep it to a page.
Feedback. Tell it what was wrong, and save the corrections so next week it already knows.

Expect seven to ten rounds before it is good. That is the process, not a sign you are doing it wrong.

The prompt

Copy this, then replace everything in brackets. Paste it into whatever AI tool you use.

You are helping me with a task I do every week. Do it the way I would, and get a little better at it each time.

THE TASK
[In one or two sentences: what you want done, and what a finished result looks like. Be specific. "Summarize this" is too vague. "Pull out every decision and every action item, with the owner and the due date" is right.]

CONTEXT YOU NEED
- My role: [your title, and what your team is responsible for]
- Right now: [current projects, priorities, and deadlines]
- People and shorthand: [names and what each person owns; any acronyms or phrases you would not know]
- How we work: [any rule of thumb, e.g. "if someone says they will look into something, treat them as the owner"]

RULES
- Use only what I give you. Do not invent anything.
- If something is missing or unclear, flag it. Do not guess.
- Keep it to [length, e.g. one page].
- Format it as [e.g. a table: item, owner, due date].
- No preamble. Start with the result.

GETTING BETTER OVER TIME
After you respond, I will tell you what was wrong. When I do, adjust so you do not repeat it next week. If this tool lets you save notes or custom instructions, save the corrections there.

This week's input is below.
---
[paste the raw material here]

How to fill it in

THE TASK is your goal

Describe the finished result, not the activity. If you asked a sharp new hire to do this and walked away, what would you want back? Write that.

CONTEXT YOU NEED is the context

The AI does not know your company. It does not know that when a certain person says “I will take a look,” they now own it. Spell out your role, what you are working on, who the people are, and any shorthand. More here means less generic output.

RULES are your guardrails

State what it must not do and the shape you want back. Length, format, and “flag it, do not guess” are the ones that matter most.

GETTING BETTER OVER TIME is the feedback loop

When the draft is wrong, do not just fix it silently. Tell the AI what it missed, then save that correction. In Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini you can keep a project or a set of custom instructions for exactly this. Next week it starts from where you left off.

Three worked examples

Each of these is the same template, filled in for a real task. Copy the closest one and change the details to match your situation.

1. Turn a meeting into action items

For the manager who leaves every meeting with a page of notes and no clear owners.

You are helping me with a task I do every week. Do it the way I would, and get a little better at it each time.

THE TASK
Read the meeting transcript below. Give me every decision that was made, and every action item with its owner and due date if one was stated. Ignore small talk and side tangents.

CONTEXT YOU NEED
- My role: I run a 6-person product marketing team.
- Right now: Q3 pricing page redesign (live Sept 30), and the analyst briefing on the 14th.
- People and shorthand: Dana owns demand gen, Raj owns content, Priya owns web. "Take a look" means that person now owns it.
- How we work: if a deadline is not stated, mark it "no date" rather than guessing.

RULES
- Use only what is in the transcript. Do not invent action items.
- If an action item has no clear owner, list it and flag it.
- One page maximum.
- Format: a short list of decisions, then a table with columns Item, Owner, Due date.
- No summary paragraph. Start with the decisions.

GETTING BETTER OVER TIME
After you respond I will tell you what you missed or got wrong. Adjust so you do not repeat it. Save the corrections to your notes if you can.

This week's input is below.
---
[paste the transcript]

2. Triage your inbox each morning

Sort what actually needs you from what does not, before you start the day.

You are helping me with a task I do every morning. Do it the way I would, and get a little better at it each time.

THE TASK
Sort the emails I paste below into four piles: reply needed today, reply needed this week, FYI only, and can be delegated. For anything in "can be delegated," say who should handle it.

CONTEXT YOU NEED
- My role: I am a director of operations. My team runs vendor relationships and internal tooling.
- Right now: renewing two contracts this month, and onboarding a new analytics vendor.
- People and shorthand: Sam handles vendor contracts, Lee handles tooling requests, Nina handles anything analytics.
- How we work: anything a team member can answer without me goes in "can be delegated."

RULES
- Do not draft replies. Just sort, and where relevant name the person.
- If you cannot tell how urgent something is, put it in "reply needed this week" and flag it.
- Format: four headed lists, nothing else.

GETTING BETTER OVER TIME
I will correct your sorting. Adjust so tomorrow morning is closer. Save what you learn.

This morning's input is below.
---
[paste or forward the emails]

3. Draft your weekly status update

Rough bullets in, a tight update to your manager out, in your voice.

You are helping me with a task I do every week. Do it the way I would, and get a little better at it each time.

THE TASK
Turn the rough bullet points below into a status update for my VP. Five to seven sentences. Lead with what shipped this week, then what is at risk and why, then the one thing I need from her.

CONTEXT YOU NEED
- My role: I lead a platform engineering team of eight.
- Right now: migrating billing to the new service (target end of quarter), and hiring two engineers.
- How we work: my VP wants risks named plainly, not softened. She does not want a task list.

RULES
- Plain sentences. No bullet points, no headers.
- Name the single most important thing you need from her. Do not list five asks.
- If a bullet point is unclear, leave it out and tell me which one.

GETTING BETTER OVER TIME
I will edit the draft. Learn my phrasing and what I cut, and apply it next week. Save it.

This week's input is below.
---
[paste your bullet points]

Do not have an AI tool yet?

You need one. Any of these work, and the prompt above is identical across all of them.

Claude at claude.ai, or the desktop app for Mac and Windows. This is what I use.
ChatGPT at chatgpt.com.
Gemini at gemini.google.com.

Start on the free tier. It is enough to run any of these tasks a few times and decide whether it clicks for you.

Once it becomes a weekly habit, get the paid plan (around $20 a month: Claude Pro, ChatGPT Plus, or Google AI Pro). Two reasons it is worth it: you stop hitting message limits in the middle of iterating on a task, and you unlock the saved-instructions or project feature that makes the feedback loop stick from one week to the next.

If your task involves files sitting on your computer, a spreadsheet or a folder of documents, the desktop apps can work with them directly. For pasting in text, the browser is fine.

Want this built across your team instead of one task at a time?

We design and deploy AI systems that do this at organization scale, with your people trained to run them.

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