Know When to AI¶

A field guide to find nails that can be hammered with AI.

This site renders the book in progress. Chapters appear here as they move from manuscript into final form.

Before the book, a short test: Six questions to disarm an AI proposal in fifteen minutes — the meeting before the method runs.

Currently published¶

Chapter 1 — What this book is — two acts that keep needing a human, and the six answers the method can produce.
Chapter 2 — Five modes of AI use — generative, conversation, building, augmentation, and the fifth: AI deployed inside an organisation.
Chapter 3 — The method at a glance — two gates above, five triage gates inside, the toolkit below.
Chapter 4 — Tier 0 checks — Technochauvinism and Abolition, the two checks that decide whether the method runs at all.
Chapter 5 — G1 Observe — the situation statement, and the observation loop that produces it.
Chapter 6 — G2 Decompose — the issue tree, Minto's pyramid, and the decomposition frames that feed it.
Chapter 7 — G3 Route — four outcomes, the controls bar, the AI capability levels, the five routing errors, and the routing map.
Chapter 8 — G4 Sequence — three lenses — dependencies, reversibility, blast radius — producing a dependency order the rollout substrate can carry.
Chapter 9 — G5 Commit — a one-page commitment per piece: named owner, numeric rollback triggers, review cadence, sunset criteria.
Chapter 10 — Three worked engagements — three European healthcare-operations briefs run through the method: an Abolition refusal, a Non-AI routing, and an assist-plus-autonomous mix.

Toolkit¶

Forty-five cards covering Tier 0 and all five gates. Each card has the same twelve-section anatomy — problem, use, inputs, outputs, a visualisation, a worked paper trail, pitfalls, when not to use, provenance, related tools, verification. Grouped three ways in the sidebar: under thirty minutes (thinking or session), workshop or reflection, and test or process (needs operating). Start at any card the chapters link to, or browse the three groups directly in the left-hand nav.

Rendering demos¶

Three representative illustrations, shown as standalone pages so you can see how each technique behaves in light and dark mode:

House rule¶

Monochrome. Black lines, borders, and text on white ground; the inverse in dark mode. Emphasis is carried by weight, fill, hatching, and strike marks — not by hue. Toggle dark mode (top right) on any illustration to see the rule hold.