Templates for working with AI

Start with the documents your AI needsEvery AI conversation starts from nothing. These are the few documents that stop you explaining your project again each time: what it is, what you decided, and what AI must ask about first.By kind of work

AI software development: Keep project instructions, architecture and agent decisions aligned.

Startup: Keep product, customer and strategic decisions current.

Research: Keep your sources, findings and research decisions organised and ready for AI.

Dissertation: Keep research, methodology, sources and supervisor decisions together.

Consulting engagement: Keep the brief, findings, recommendations and client decisions straight.

Any project: A brief, a decisions log and instructions for AI: the three documents every project needs.

Every template

AGENTS.md: Instructions for the coding agents working in your repository.

Architecture: How the system fits together, and the decisions that shaped it.

Product requirements: What the product must do, for whom, and what is deliberately out of scope.

Decisions: What has been decided, what was ruled out, and why.

Testing: How the project is tested, and what a change has to prove.

Research context: What the research is about, why it matters, and where its edges are.

Research questions: The question you are answering, and what you currently think.

Sources: Which sources to trust, which to treat with care, and how to cite.

Findings: What you have found, the evidence for it, and what follows.

Methodology: How the work is being done, the choices made, and their limits.

Dissertation context: Your topic, your argument, the requirements, and how AI may help.

Supervisor feedback: What your supervisor said, and what you did about it.

Product brief: What you are building, for whom, and why it should exist.

Customer research: Who you spoke to, what they said, and what you are learning.

Pricing: Your current pricing, the reasoning, and what you ruled out.

Competitor research: Who else solves the problem, and where you differ.

Client brief: The client, the objective, the scope and the people involved.

Recommendations: What you recommend, what it rests on, and the risks.

Assumptions: What you are assuming, what has been confirmed, and what proved wrong.

AI instructions: How AI should help with this project, and what it must ask about first.

Project brief: What the project is, who is involved, and what it has to fit within.

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