Learn to use AI well.
Short, practical guides that each teach one skill you can use the same day, with an exercise to try it. Start at the top if you're new.
Foundations
For your first months with AI. No jargon assumed.
- What an AI model actually does (and why it makes things up)Prediction, training cutoffs and context windows in plain English, plus a ten-minute exercise comparing answers with and without a source.Beginner9 min3 activities
- Write prompts that get usable answersMost disappointing AI answers come from a missing brief, not a weak model. A four-part structure fixes most of them.Beginner8 min3 activities
- Choose the right AI for the taskFive questions that pick a model and a plan in a few minutes, the current options with dated sources, and a twenty-minute test that settles it on your own work.Beginner10 min3 activities
- Check an AI answer before you rely on itA practical routine for catching invented sources, stretched numbers and misleading summaries, worked through on a real-looking AI answer with five planted mistakes.Beginner12 min4 activities
Practice
For daily users ready to build real workflows.
- Research properly with AIUse AI to speed up research without letting it become your source. A five-step loop, worked through by tracing a real headline statistic back to its original study.Beginner13 min4 activities
- Make AI useful with documents and dataGet the text out cleanly, say exactly what you want back, and check it with something better than another AI. Worked through on a real invoice extraction, with the real outputs.Intermediate14 min4 activities
- AI-assisted coding without losing the plotA beginner's routine for coding with an AI assistant: small changes, a test as the referee, and a review before you keep anything. Worked through on a real bug, with the real error output.Beginner15 min5 activities
- Build your first repeatable AI workflowTurn a job you do every week into a saved, checkable routine instead of starting from a blank chat each time. Worked through on meeting notes, with a free workflow card.Beginner14 min2 activities
- Agents, MCP servers and skills: what each is and when to use onePlain definitions from the official documentation, how the pieces fit together, and a permissions review to do before you connect an AI tool to anything that matters.Intermediate14 min5 activities
Coming next
Guides we’re writing now. We list them so you can see where Learn is going; they aren’t published yet.
- AI for a small business: where to startThree places AI tends to pay off first, and the policies to write before anyone starts.Beginner
Free worksheets
Templates you’ll actually use
Fill them in online, print them, or download a designed PDF. Each one has a plain-text copy for pasting into any AI tool. No signup needed.
- The four-part briefPDF of The four-part brief
- The Which AI? worksheetPDF of The Which AI? worksheet
- The workflow cardPDF of The workflow card
- The source logPDF of The source log
- The code change reviewPDF of The code change review
- The agent permissions reviewPDF of The agent permissions review
- The extraction specPDF of The extraction spec