Guide
The Non-Technical Leader’s Guide to AI
A plain-English curriculum for executives who need to understand AI well enough to ask better questions, approve smarter investments, and spot operational risk without becoming engineers.
AI basics
The core vocabulary leaders need before evaluating tools.
- 1What is an LLM?June 18, 2026A plain-English guide to what large language models are, what they are good at, and where leaders should be careful.
- 2What are tokens?June 22, 2026Tokens are the hidden meter behind AI cost, speed, and context. Leaders do not need the math, but they do need the model.
- 3What is context?June 26, 2026Most AI failures are blamed on the model. Many are actually context failures.
- 4How are AI costs calculated?June 30, 2026AI cost is not mysterious. Most of it comes from what you send in, what comes back, which model you use, and how often the workflow runs.
Tools leaders hear about
Where software work happens and how AI coding tools differ.
- 5What is GitHub?July 4, 2026GitHub is not just where code lives. It is where software changes are proposed, reviewed, approved, and remembered.
- 6VS Code vs Cursor vs Codex vs OpenCodeJuly 8, 2026These tools are not interchangeable magic boxes. They live at different layers of how software work gets done.
AI systems
The operating layer around models: harnesses, loops, context, and skills.
- 7What is an AI harness?July 12, 2026The model is not the whole product. The harness is what makes AI usable, reviewable, and safe enough for real work.
- 8What is an AI loop?July 16, 2026A loop is how AI moves from one-off answer machine to repeatable workflow.
- 9How do you start setting up context?July 20, 2026Good context is curated, current, and connected to the task. It is not a giant document dump.
- 10What are AI skills?July 24, 2026A skill is a reusable way to teach AI how to do one bounded type of work well.
- 11How do you set up an AI skill?July 28, 2026The best first skill is not the most impressive one. It is the repeated task your team keeps explaining from scratch.
- 12How do teams run and share AI skills?July 31, 2026If a skill changes how work gets done, it needs ownership, versioning, review, and a way to retire stale instructions.