Guides
Short, original AI guides for devs and EMs — filter by tool or topic, search, and sort. Newest first.
16 guides
The AI Skill Worth Learning Now: Context Engineering
Prompt engineering was never really a job, and the models got good enough to do it for you. The skill that's actually sticking is context engineering. Here's what it is and how to start.
AI Certifications a Hiring Manager Actually Reads
As an EM who screens resumes, most AI certificates tell me nothing. A few tell me something useful. Here is the honest difference, and how to make any course actually count.
The Lean AI Stack for a Solo Founder
You don't need fifteen AI subscriptions to run a one-person business. You need a small stack that covers the jobs you'd otherwise hire for. Here is the four-role setup I'd actually start with.
Canva's AI: Design Work When You're Not a Designer
You will never out-design a designer with Canva's AI, and you don't need to. For the everyday graphics a dev or founder actually has to ship, here is how to get to "good enough" fast — and where to stop.
Context Engineering: The Skill That Outgrew Prompting
Clever prompts were the 2024 skill. The 2026 skill is managing what the model can see — its instructions, tools, history, and data — as a finite budget. Here is the shift, in plain terms.
The Honest AI Side Hustle for Engineers
Most "AI side hustle" advice is selling you a course, not a business. The real opportunity for an engineer is narrower and more boring than the hype — and it actually works. Here it is.
ChatGPT Projects: A Workspace That Keeps Your Context
Most people run their whole life through one endless ChatGPT thread. Projects fix that by giving each piece of work its own files, its own rules, and its own memory. Here is how I use them.
Claude Skills: Stop Re-Teaching the Same Task
If you keep pasting the same instructions into Claude every week, you are doing manual work a Skill should do for you. Here is when a Skill is worth writing and when it is overkill.
Gemini in Workspace: Where Google's AI Earns Its Keep
Gemini is now baked into Gmail, Docs, and Sheets whether you asked for it or not. Most of it is noise — but two or three things genuinely save time. Here is where to actually use it.
Notion AI: Ask Your Own Workspace a Question
The killer feature of Notion AI is not writing — it is answering. Ask it where a decision lives across your docs and connected tools, and it finds the answer with citations. Here is how to make it reliable.
Perplexity: Research That Shows Its Work
A chatbot gives you an answer. Perplexity gives you an answer plus the links it came from. For anything you will repeat out loud or put in a doc, that difference is the whole point.
Claude Code for Engineers — From Chat to Coworker
Most engineers use Claude like a smarter search box. Here is the short path to using it like a teammate that actually ships work on your machine.
The AI-Native International Job Hunt
How a dev or EM outside the US can use AI to land a role abroad — not by faking skills, but by closing the gap between what you have done and how a foreign hiring manager reads it.
The Anatomy of a Prompt That Actually Works
Stop collecting magic phrases. A reliable prompt has five parts, and once you can name them you can debug any bad output in seconds.
Build Your First AI Agent (Without the Hype)
An agent is not a magic autonomous worker. It is a loop with tools and a goal. Build a real one this week by starting with the smallest version that does something useful.
Which AI Models Actually Matter This Month
You do not need to track every model release. You need a simple way to decide which ones change your work. Here is the filter I use and what passed it recently.