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The best AI advice I know fits in one sentence

Mick Cairn · 13 August 2026

People ask what the single best piece of AI advice is, expecting something technical. Here it is, and it's not technical at all: tell it what "done" looks like before you ask it to start.

That's the whole thing. Not a magic phrase, not a plugin, not a subscription tier. Just a habit of pausing for one extra sentence before you hit send: "and here's how I'll know if this is right." Most disappointing AI answers trace back to a request that never said what success looked like, so the model had to guess, and guessed something reasonable but not what you actually wanted.

Try it on the next thing you ask for. Whatever the request is, add one clause at the end describing what a good answer would look like or do. Watch how much less editing you do afterward.

Vague requests get vague answers. That's not the model's fault, and it's completely fixable.

One useful thing a week

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