The curriculum
The Guide
Seven chapters, in reading order — the strategy layer above the patterns. Start at chapter one; it is allowed to talk you out of shipping.
- CH—01Should This Be AI At All?The most senior design decision in an AI product is made before any interface exists — and “no” is a shippable answer.
- CH—02The Model Is a MaterialDesigners who can’t read an eval are designing blind — nondeterminism is a material property, and you learn materials by testing them.
- CH—03Mental Models & the First Five MinutesPeople walk in with a mental model borrowed from sci-fi, search engines, or a coworker — your onboarding either corrects it or gets crushed by it.
- CH—04Legibility Is the ProductIn a system that might be wrong, showing the work isn’t transparency theater — it’s the primary trust interface.
- CH—05Delegation: Designing the Agentic Org ChartWhen AI acts instead of answers, the design question becomes organizational — who approves, who steers, who owns the consequence.
- CH—06When It’s WrongError handling is not an edge case in AI products — it’s a core loop, and products are judged by their worst answer, not their average one.
- CH—07Memory & the Long RelationshipPersonalization without legibility is surveillance with better UX — a system that remembers must show what it remembers and take corrections.