Practical guidance for people who use AI seriously.
Better questions produce better results. This site is built around that idea. Not prompt tricks, not hype, not benchmarks. Structured thinking, real workflows, and field-tested lessons from someone who uses these tools under load every day.
The Guides are the lessons. The Field Notes are the stories of how I learned them.
- Charles Edmonds
Get new guides and field notes by email as they come out.
Subscribe to Ask Good QuestionsRecent Guides
See allThe Moving Target
One of the easiest mistakes to make in AI-assisted development is assuming the target stays fixed just because the feature list does.
At first, the moving target may look like the specification itself. You think you know what the project needs, then new requirements show up, assumptions change, an…
Stop, Drop, and Roll
Sometimes the problem isn't the code.
Sometimes the problem is the conversation.
That's one of those things that sounds obvious after you've been burned by it, but it's not obvious while you're in the middle of it.
You're working with an AI assistant. You give it a task. It gets part of it rig…
Do Not Let AI Build the Elephant in the Room
AI usually doesn't build the elephant in one move.
That's the dangerous part.
A project starts out with good intentions. The file structure makes sense. The responsibilities seem pretty clear. You've got a place for components, a place for state, a place for services, a place for utilities, mayb…
Recent Field Notes
See allWhen “Done” Wasn’t Ready to Release
There is a particular kind of temptation that shows up when a project gets close to release.
You can see the finish line. The features are there. The rough edges feel survivable. And because AI makes it easier to keep moving, there is a strong pull to say, “That’s probably good enough for version…
When the Conversation Became Part of the Bug
I ran into one of those AI-assisted development failures recently that was miserable while it was happening and useful after I had a little distance from it.
That's usually how these lessons show up.
They don't arrive politely.
They arrive after you've spent too much time trying to figure out…
The Elephant Does Not Walk Into the Room
I was working through a familiar kind of job recently: taking older working code and moving the parts worth saving into a newer, cleaner framework.
That sounds straightforward enough.
It usually isn't.
The old code has useful pieces in it. Some of it still represents decisions that were correc…
I'm working on Real Programmers Use AI, a practical book for developers who want to use AI without losing control of their work. The guides and field notes here are drawn from the same material.