Stop treating AI like Google

Welcome

Most people use AI like a search engine.

They ask one question.

They get one answer.

That works.

But AI can do much more.

It can become part of your daily workflow.

This series is about practical ideas that you can use today.

No hype.

No magic.

Just real examples.

My first experience

When I started using AI, I asked questions like:

• Write a SQL query.
• Explain Docker.
• Create a REST API.

The answers were useful.

But nothing really changed.

The biggest improvement came when I started giving AI context.

I explained the project.

I explained the standards.

I explained what good code looked like.

The answers became much better.

Think of AI as another engineer

AI is fast.

It never gets tired.

It can review code.

It can write documentation.

It can suggest tests.

But it still needs a human to decide what is right.

That is how I use it.

A simple workflow

1. Plan the feature.
2. Ask AI for ideas.
3. Build the feature.
4. Ask AI to review it.
5. Improve the code.
6. Write tests.
7. Update the documentation.

Small improvements every day become big improvements over time.

Your challenge

Create an AGENTS.md file.

Write one planning prompt.

Write one review prompt.

Use them on your next feature.

GitHub

Source code, prompts and templates:

github.com/grbzati1/practical-ai-engineering

Next week we will build an AI-assisted pull request review with GitHub Actions.