For readers who have already read How to Describe Complex Ideas to Your AI: what changed, newest first.
2026-10-08: New book: How to Describe Complex Ideas to Your AI
If you ask for work and do not write code, you owe the builder a clear statement of what you want, who and what is involved, what you know, and how you will judge the result. This Pocket Guide, written for sponsors, product owners, research leads, founders, and procurement leads, shows how AI makes that cheap. You paste nine prompts, answer an assistant’s questions, and review plain-English summaries while it drafts a specification and a machine-readable model of your work.
One invented case appears throughout the guide, from a vague “fix our referrals” to a package a coding team, an integration team, and a vendor evaluator can each use. It shows what the files look like, how they are checked, which kinds of mistakes the checks find and which they cannot, and how to keep the package accurate when circumstances change. It names six next steps, including waiting, and it never treats a specification as an order to build.
The files, prompts, and a checking script are in the online companion.