0.5 · The 3 golden rules for talking to an AI
In 2 minutes
The quality of the answer depends above all on the quality of the request. That is the best news in this handbook: you do not have to become technical to get better, you just have to say what you want more clearly.
Three rules are enough to start, and each one fits on a single line: say clearly what you want, give the context that matters, correct and ask again.
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Rule 1 · Say clearly what you want
Rule 2 · Give the context
Rule 3 · Correct and ask again
The third rule is the most neglected, and it is the one that makes the biggest difference. You do not have to get it right first time. After the answer, you adjust in one sentence:
That's good, but make it shorter and add a request for a quick call-out.Two or three exchanges of that kind are worth more than a perfect opening request, which nobody ever writes first time.
If you were to remember only one thing from this whole chapter: say who it is for, what it is for, and how long it should be. Those three details alone fix most disappointing answers.
Take a vague request you genuinely have in mind, and rewrite it applying the three rules. Put both versions to Claude, one after the other, in two different conversations, and compare the answers.
It is the most useful exercise in the whole of Part 0.
- Your “after” version says who it is for, what it is for and how long it should be.
- You can use the second answer without reworking it, or almost.
- You can say which of the three details changed the result the most. That is the one you will forget least often from now on.
- Trying to cram everything into one complicated sentence. Get to the point, then refine as the exchange goes on. A ten-line request is not ten times better.
- Forgetting the context. The AI knows nothing about your job, your recipient or your constraints until you say so.
Where this takes you
These three rules are the short version of a single move: Describing. In Part I we will open it up into six reflexes, which are the same three rules, in finer detail.
Describing is the first of the handbook's four moves, the 4 Ds: Delegating (choosing what you hand to the AI and what you keep), Describing (putting it well), Discerning (judging the answer), being Diligent (checking before you use it). You will meet them again in every part, with all four tools.
The 4 Ds are not done one after the other. They turn, like two clocks set one inside the other, and not at the same speed: the first turns inside the work, the second around it.
The clock of the minute: Describing ↔ Discerning. You ask, you look, you adjust. One turn lasts ten seconds, and you will make hundreds of them in this handbook. It is the ordinary move, the one you learn without noticing, simply by practising.
The clock of the week: Delegating ↔ being Diligent. What do I hand over, what do I keep? And what I have handed over, can I answer for it? One turn lasts several days, you almost never make it on purpose, and yet it is the one that decides whether AI helps you earn your living or makes your life harder.
Describing is three different things. People confuse them, and that explains most disappointing results. Take a chaser for an unpaid invoice.
What you want to get. “A ten-line email, to a client I want to keep.”
How you want it to go about it. “Start by rereading the three previous exchanges before you write anything at all.”
How you want it to talk to you. “Be direct. If you think the tone is too harsh, tell me instead of softening it yourself.”
Beginners only write the first. All three together fit in four lines and change everything.
And Discerning is the same three, mirrored. Is the result good? Was the path it took the right one? And did its way of answering me serve me, or did it simply please me?
These markers are for getting started. Claude now asks some of the right questions itself before it sets off. What remains yours, and what it cannot guess: your context, your examples, your criteria for success.
- Say clearly what you want.
- Give the context that matters: who it is for, what it is for, how long it should be.
- Correct and ask again without hesitating: the first answer is a draft.
- Those three rules are the D of Describing. The other three Ds arrive in Part I.
The rest of the handbook covers Claude, Higgsfield, Claude Design and Claude Code, with 11 recipes and a 30-day programme.
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This handbook is not an expert's course: it is the roadmap of my own learning of these tools, written for the least technical among us.
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