AI Intermediate — beyond the basics
You have the basics: you can ask, check, and keep the secrets out. Now go deeper. Ten lessons with a new host, Maggie, on the skills that turn a chat into a working tool — giving AI the full picture, interrogating long documents, research with receipts, bigger writing projects, spreadsheets without the tears, pictures with a plan, talking instead of typing, AI in your workday, officialdom done properly, and finally a helper of your own. Same camp format as always: a short video, written notes, and one thing to try.
The intermediate lessons
Give AI the full picture
Why the same question gets a weak answer cold and a strong one with context — background, task, and an example of good, shown on a real letter.
Work with long documents
Stop reading long reports cover to cover — question them instead: specific questions, page numbers for every claim, comparisons as tables, and a deadline hunt, shown on a real 40-page report.
Research you can trust
Chat answers from memory; research tools answer with receipts. Maggie runs the three-step trust test — do sources agree, who benefits, how fresh — on a real boiler decision, and learns why a range with reasons beats a false exact number.
Bigger writing projects
The family history that stalled for six years, finished the project way — heap the material, outline first, draft chapter by chapter in your own voice, polish last.
Make sense of spreadsheets
The village hall's untidy bookings sheet, tamed without learning a single formula the hard way — tidy-up, plain-English questions, formulas explained in words, and a chart for the committee.
Pictures with a plan
From asking for a picture to directing one — one-change-at-a-time editing, anchors that keep a place or character consistent, and photo fixes that obey the word "leave", shown on a four-seasons cottage calendar.
Talk to it
Put the keyboard down — talk a problem through and have it played back tidy, dictate drafts at walking speed, and turn openly-made recordings into minutes with a who-promised-what list.
AI in your workday
A real Monday in Maggie's hall-and-rota workday — the today/week/on-fire brief, draft replies in her own tone edited with a pencil, forty-message threads collapsed to decisions, and the bright line: it drafts, she sends.
Forms, letters & officialdom
An energy-bill dispute done properly — evidence gathered from documents before any letter exists, a calm dated draft, every figure checked against a bill, and the bracket rule that stops invented facts.
Build your own helper
The graduation lesson — turn the series' briefs into a standing helper: standing instructions that carry your full picture (never your secrets), a playbook of your best questions, your own documents inside, and a seasonal prune.
Same camp, same rules
The Intermediate lessons are taught the same way as the basics: one idea at a time, everyday examples, Aria narrating, and the same safe-place standard — everything G-rated, reviewed before it publishes, and free to learn with no account and no payment. Your host on screen is new — Maggie, in her bright home-office nook. The lessons assume you already have the basics; if you are brand new, start with Episode 1 first.