7 articles
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AI feels free, but the bill is coming
AI feels almost free today, because someone else is paying the bill. I would already work as if you are paying the real price.
During a Copilot workshop, we had been asking all sorts of things all morning. We translated texts, had summaries made and tried things out. I had typed 'remember about me that' a few times in a row myself, just to show how that works. And nobody stopped to think about what all that costs. I think that makes sense, because it feels like it costs nothing. So I wanted to talk about tokenomics for a moment. You are going to hear that word a lot in the coming years.
At the bottom of this article is a prompt to summarise your longest chat, so you can continue in a new conversation.
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Let your AI think in English, even if you work in Dutch
Dutch costs your AI more working memory than English. So I let my AI work in English, and one sentence in your instruction is enough for that.
In the workshop I sometimes show the instruction of my own agent. People expect something complicated then. What stands out to them most is one little sentence at the top: you do all the work in English. You think in English and you write your intermediate steps in English. And you brief other agents in English too.
And then comes the question I see coming: 'Steff, you write everything in Dutch, right?' That is true. My articles and my emails are in Dutch, and my workshops too. Only what my AI does along the way to get there happens in English. And there is a very practical reason for that.
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Swipe file, ten sentences to stop your AI losing the plot
Ten sentences to copy for the start, the middle and the end of a long AI task, so you work with a handover instead of a summary of a summary.
A long task with AI rarely goes wrong in a single moment. It slips away. An agreement about the tone disappears, an exception is forgotten, and three sessions later your AI is working on a project that is just not yours anymore. With the right sentence at the right time you stop that. These are the ten I use myself, ordered by the moment you need them.
How you use this
A swipe file is a cheat sheet. You do not read it from front to back, you grab the sentence you need right now. Save this page to your favourites, or paste the sentences into a note next to your AI tool.
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Markdown is the native language of AI
Why a PDF burdens your AI more than the same text in Markdown, and two small habits that instantly improve your output and your instructions.
When I ask in a workshop who has ever dragged a PDF into an AI chat, almost all hands go up. When I ask who knows what Markdown is, only a few remain. Yet that second one is probably the most underestimated piece of knowledge in working with AI.
At the bottom of this article you will find a prompt that lets you convert a document to Markdown yourself, which you can copy just like that.
What Markdown is
Markdown is plain text with a few simple characters for structure. A hash for a title. Two asterisks around a word for bold. A hyphen for a list. It is nothing more than that. You can read it in any text editor, and it still looks logical even without formatting.
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Edit your question instead of chatting on
If the answer is not right, correcting it in a new message is the reflex. Editing your first question often works better, and your AI stays sharper.
You ask AI a question, the answer is not quite right, and you type: no, shorter. Then: no, more formal. Then: and without that list. Five messages later you have something usable, and a conversation full of half corrections. I see it in every workshop. It is the most natural reflex, and often not the best one.
At the bottom of this article you will find a prompt that helps you see what was missing in your question.
What happens when you keep correcting
Every correction you type in a new message is added to everything that was already there. Your original question, the failed first answer, your first correction, the second answer, your second correction. The model has to take all those layers with it and deduce for itself what you actually want now.
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Write a handover instead of compressing
A summary of a summary loses something every time. With a handover document and a phased plan, you work on large tasks without your AI losing the thread.
Many AI tools nowadays have a button that shortens your long conversation. You click it, the chat is summarised, and you can continue. It feels efficient. In my workshops, I still advise against it for anything that matters. There is a better way, and it only costs you one extra step.
Below this article, you will also find the swipe file with sentences for a good handover, free if you have an account.
What compressing does to your conversation
Compressing, or compacting as some tools call it, summarises your conversation and throws the rest away. The first time, you notice little difference. But with a long task, it happens again, and again. After a few rounds, you are working with a summary of a summary of a summary.
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Why your longest chat is your worst chat
A long chat does not train your AI, it fills the context window. Why the quality drops halfway through, and the habit that solves it.
In almost every workshop someone proudly tells me they have been working in the same chat for weeks. 'That way it gets to know me.' I understand the thought. It feels like a colleague who increasingly knows how you work. Except it is not true, and precisely because of that the answer gets worse instead of better after a while.
At the bottom of this article is the prompt you use to wrap up a long chat, so you can start fresh properly.
A chat is not a learning process
A language model does not learn while you talk to it. It predicts the next word over and over again, based on what is in its context window. That context window is its working memory: your question, the files you added, and the entire conversation up to now.
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