Beginners guides
Step-by-step AI guides tagged Beginners.
Analyse a spreadsheet with AI and check its work
AI data analysis is genuinely useful and silently wrong often enough that an unchecked number should nev...
Read guideSet up a daily AI habit that survives week two
The problem is almost never the tool. It is that nothing in your day reminds you to use it, so you defau...
Read guideAutomate a repetitive task with AI in an afternoon
Not every repeated job is worth automating, and the ones that are follow a pattern. This walks through c...
Read guidePrompt engineering basics that actually change the output
Most prompt advice is folklore. These five techniques reliably change what a model produces, and it is w...
Read guideChoose your first AI assistant without overthinking it
Every comparison table lists twenty differences and only three of them change your day. Here is how to p...
Read guideWrite a blog post with AI without it sounding like AI
Most AI-written posts read as AI-written because of how they were prompted, not because of the model. Th...
Read guideConnect two apps with an AI step in the middle
The genuinely useful automations are not the clever ones. They are a trigger, one AI step that makes a s...
Read guideClean up bad audio with AI before you re-record
AI audio repair has quietly become very good. Knowing which problems it solves saves a re-record; knowin...
Read guideEdit AI drafts so they stop sounding like drafts
Readers cannot always name what makes text feel machine-written, but they notice. These are the specific...
Read guideWhat AI can and cannot do for you right now
Most disappointment with AI comes from pointing it at the wrong task. Here is where current models are g...
Read guideWrite image prompts that get the composition you meant
Image models are good at subjects and bad at guessing layout. Saying the composition out loud is what cl...
Read guideDisclose AI use in your work the right amount
Disclosure norms are unsettled and the test that works is simple: would this person feel misled if they...
Read guideWritten to be followed, not skimmed
Every guide here is a procedure someone actually ran, with the steps, the time it takes and the places it goes wrong.
Numbered steps, not prose
Each guide breaks into steps with their own anchor, so you can send a colleague straight to step four. Those anchors are minted once and never move.
Levels you can read without colour
Beginner to Expert, shown as filled pips as well as a label, so the level survives a screenshot, a colourblind reader and a printout.
An honest time estimate
The minutes on each card are the sum of its steps, not a reading speed. Guides without an estimate sort last rather than first — an unknown length is not a short one.
Freshness that means something
“Updated” moves only when a person changed the content — never when someone read it. Sorting evergreen guides any other way ranks whatever was most recently opened.
Filters that admit when they are empty
Every count is measured with your other filters applied, so the number beside an option is what you will actually get. Options that cannot narrow anything are not offered.
Prerequisites up front
What you need before you start, and what you will be able to do at the end, are stated before the first step — not discovered halfway through.
