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AI Field Guide
Short, practical entries on getting the most out of AI tools. Browse by category, or search from the sidebar.
Prompting
Critique loop
How do I get higher-quality output without just hoping the first try is good?
Having it ask you questions
The AI charges ahead and builds the wrong thing before I've explained what I want.
Voice input
How do I get all the context in my head into an AI without writing five paragraphs?
Writing good prompts
I ask AI a question and get a generic, useless answer back.
Concepts
Agents
Everyone keeps saying "agent" and I don't actually know what they mean.
Context engineering
What is context engineering, and how is it different from prompt engineering?
Effort level
What does "effort" or "reasoning effort" mean on a model?
Evals
How do I know if my AI feature or prompt is any good?
Fine-tuning
What is fine-tuning, and when is it worth it?
Hallucinations
The AI made up a fact, a quote, or a citation and stated it with total confidence.
Harness
What do people mean by an "agent harness"?
Local vs cloud AI
Why can some AI tools touch my files and others can't?
MCP
Everyone's talking about MCP and I don't know what it is.
Model routing
My AI costs are climbing faster than the value I'm getting, what do I cut first?
Open, open-weight, and proprietary models
What's the difference between an open-source model and an open-weight one?
Prompt injection
What is prompt injection?
RAG
What is RAG, and why do vendors keep bringing it up?
Skills
What's a "skill" in the context of AI agents?
Tokens
What's a token, and why does everything get measured in them?
Vibe coding
What is vibe coding?
Models
Choosing an AI model
Which AI model should I use?
Claude
What is Claude and who makes it?
DeepSeek
What is DeepSeek and why did it get so much attention?
Gemini
What is Gemini and who makes it?
GPT
What is GPT, and is it the same as ChatGPT?
Grok
What is Grok and who makes it?
Hermes
What's Hermes and how is it different from Claude or GPT?
Kimi
What is Kimi and who makes it?
Llama
What is Llama and who makes it?
Qwen
What is Qwen and who makes it?
Skills
Design systems
Why does everything my AI builds look generic and a little off?
Karpathy coding guidelines
My AI coding agent overcomplicates everything and adds stuff I didn't ask for.
Progressive disclosure
My Skill or custom instructions are bloating every AI call.
Remotion
How can I make polished, animated videos with AI if I'm not a video editor?
Taste Skill
The UIs my AI coding agent builds all look the same.
Tools
Claude Code commands
/compactMy long Claude Code session gets slow and starts losing track of what we're doing.
/goalMy AI agent stalls and I have to keep coming back to it
/insightsAm I using Claude Code well or am I making mistakes when I prompt?
/loopHow do I get my agent to keep working without me prompting every step?
/remote-controlHow can I use my agent when I’m away from my computer?
/rewindClaude went down the wrong path and I want to get back to where things worked.