One AI technique, every single day

Short, usable lessons from the work — prompting, AI video direction, product building and shipping. Written in Lagos, Nigeria, free to read.

Published nuggets

  1. Used and loved are two different achievements — The first achievement gets them in. The second makes them stay. Don't stop at one. (Design)
  2. An unmotivated stop reads as a render fail — Every stop needs an arrival. Every resume needs a cause. (Continuity)
  3. Be your own first twenty users — If the platform can't keep user number one, you've built an empty house with very good plumbing. (Growth)
  4. Fabric proves that time is real — Cloth is a clock. Wind it. (Continuity)
  5. Your users will tell you what you actually built — Do not rush into rubbish, and do not iterate forever and forget to launch. Both kill. (Product)
  6. Give the wind a direction — One wind. One direction. Written down. (Continuity)
  7. Form is psychology — Form is not neutral. It argues louder than your content. (Product)
  8. Light is a behavior, not a snapshot — Specify how the light travels through the piece, not what it looks like in one frame. (Continuity)
  9. Utility isn't always practical — Observe what people do, not what they say — and never just what you intended. (Product)
  10. Dust is your best continuity actor — Cast the dust. It works cheap and never breaks character. (Continuity)
  11. Design for the report, then for the brigade — Protect the victims first. Then protect the rule from abuse. (Safety)
  12. Ask where the dust went — Think in chains, not snapshots. (Continuity)
  13. Know which features to refuse — A founder is defined by the features they refuse as much as the ones they ship. (Product)
  14. One orbit per piece — The orbit is a crown. Nobody wears two. (Motion psychology)
  15. Ask the people who have been hurt — The threat model you can't imagine is someone else's lived experience. Go ask. (Safety)
  16. The pullback is a revelation — specify the scale it reveals — The emptiness is the payoff. The pullback just delivers it. (Motion psychology)
  17. Identity before access — On a social platform, identity isn't bureaucracy. It's a safety feature. (Product)
  18. Name the emotional target of the camera move, not just the move — Say what the movement means, not only what it is. (Motion psychology)
  19. Stop being generous with space — Every byte you store and ship is a bill. Put a bouncer on the upload door. (Optimisation)
  20. Every prompt needs a closing thesis line — If you can't write the thesis line, the piece isn't ready. (Structure)
  21. Test until you're happy, not until you're tired — Find your bugs before your users do, or your users will find them for you. (Testing)
  22. The first and last lines are your power positions — Open with the world. Close with the law. (Structure)
  23. Give the AI a test account, not your life — Let it test as a user. Never as you. (Testing)
  24. Name your beats — A named beat is a directed beat. An unnamed one is a paragraph. (Structure)
  25. The forgot-password flow is a growth budget — People will forget. Mercy is cheaper than churn. (Growth)
  26. Pick one register. Negate the rest. — The first is a decision. The wishlist is an abdication. (Style)
  27. Safe defaults are a business model — Whoever protects newbies by default earns them for life. Choose partners accordingly — and be one. (Security)
  28. Identity drifts — lock it at the top — One identity block, zero drift instruction, and spend your close-ups on the still moments. (Camera language)
  29. Free code is not a living product — A repo is a manuscript. Hosting, database, and hands are what publish it. (Shipping)
  30. When the output fails, cut — don't add — The failing prompt is almost never underwritten. It's overcrowded. (Iteration)
  31. You cannot actually break it — You have an undo button and walls between the parts. Build like someone who knows that. (Mindset)
  32. Be specific or be silent — Cut the line. An absence is safer than a blank cheque. (Prompting)
  33. Ask like a toddler — Pride is expensive. The beginner's question gets the expert's walkthrough. (Process augmentation)
  34. One fully-described element per second — "Old women laughing" beats a paragraph about their attire, joy, and raised hands. (Composition)
  35. The dread is about the room, not the task — Walk into the room you've been avoiding. The task is smaller than the door made it look. (Mindset)
  36. Every degree of freedom you leave is a degree you've lost — The model doesn't fill gaps with imagination. It fills them with cliché. (Prompting)
  37. Choose your backend for where you're going — Build on the foundation of the city you're planning, not the village you're in. (Infrastructure)
  38. Layer the frame with spatial keys — Foreground, midground, background. Give every element an address. (Composition)
  39. People come back when they see movement — No heartbeat, no habit. Build the signal that says "come and see." (Growth)
  40. Timestamp every beat — Brackets are law. "Then" is a wish. (Prompting)
  41. Friends are diagnostic equipment — Put it in strangers' hands early. Their confusion is your roadmap. (Testing)
  42. Light has four properties. Amateurs specify zero. — Source, temperature, quality, behavior. Every time. (Lighting)
  43. Live inside the thing you built — Iteration is not a phase after building. It is the building. (Product)
  44. Emotions don't render. Evidence does. — Translate every emotion into something visible. The audience reads it back the same way they read an actor. (Prompting)
  45. Use the AI to brief you for the AI — The new skill isn't knowing everything. It's articulating what you want and letting the intelligence fill the gaps. (Building)
  46. Name the lens — Don't describe the camera. Specify it. (Camera language)
  47. Start where it is safe, not where it is hard — Build confidence and vocabulary first. The hard stuff becomes easy once the fear is gone. (Mindset)
  48. The first verb wins — One verb per sentence. Rank them by writing order. (Prompting)

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