Learn AI. In the order I learned it in.
It took me two years to figure out how all of this fits together — for nothing. If I had to do it over, I'd take this route. Four steps that build on each other, 13 articles already written, all tested on my own business before they landed here. Take them in order, skip what you already know.
Your real questions.
The straight answers.
Everyone asks the same ones. Let's settle them now, so you start with a clear head.
Do I need to know how to code?
No, and that's the whole point. For 90% of what you'll do, zero lines of code: you write in plain language, the AI does the work. Claude Code, the most "technical" tool, shows up in step 02 — and even there I hold your hand from start to finish.
Isn't it too late?
No, you're arriving at exactly the right moment. Half of everyone started this year. You're not behind — you're just showing up when the tools have finally become simple. The ones who started two years ago, like me, struggled for nothing.
Will AI replace my job?
What replaces you is someone who knows how to use it, not the machine. Learning to use it is exactly how you stay in the game. That's the goal of this path: putting you on the right side of it.
How long before I'm comfortable?
A few hours for the basics, a weekend to be self-sufficient. Not six months. You can even do your first genuinely useful thing today — the block right below is there for that.
I won't get any of it, it's too technical?
That's exactly what this path avoids. Zero jargon, every word explained, a glossary if a term trips you up. It's arranged in the order you actually learn it. If a sentence still loses you, write to me: I'll rewrite it.
Would you rather be walked through it?
Get the path over 7 days: one short email a day, in the right order, so you move forward without second-guessing. Free, and you unsubscribe in 1 click.
Your first real prompt, right now.
Before you even read anything: open ChatGPT, Claude or Le Chat (all free), paste this, and replace the part in orange with whatever you want to understand.
You are a patient teacher who explains things without jargon.
Explain to me simply [what you want to understand — e.g. GDPR, an electricity bill, what AI is].
Give me: 1) a one-sentence definition, 2) an example from everyday life, 3) the one thing to remember.
An answer in 3 clear points, no fluff. And most of all: you just wrote a real prompt — a role ("patient teacher"), a precise request, an imposed format. That's the whole craft. The rest of the path is just refining that.
Never really
used AI before?
Start here.
The 3 ways into Claude explained without jargon. Your first prompt that actually works. The 5 beginner mistakes to avoid.
The 8 AI
words to grasp
before the rest.
The long definitions from the original glossary, split out to lay the basics without mixing them up with the full glossary.
AI
glossary: find
the right term.
Keep it open in a tab. The moment a word escapes you — RAG, hallucination, webhook, AGENTS.md — you search, you understand, you come back.
Claude Code,
the full
setup.
Step-by-step Mac install. Connecting to the Ghostty terminal. The 5 prompts that change your relationship with Claude. 15-min video as a bonus.
Claude Code
loops,
explained.
A one-off command becomes a task that runs in the background. Watch deploy, auto-watch, smart retry — the real difference between "Claude helps me" and "Claude works for me".
The 6 official
plugins
to install.
6 commands, 6 new superpowers for Claude Code: dev methodology, up-to-date docs, CLAUDE.md audit, auto UI design. All official Anthropic, all user-scoped — installed once for all your projects.
GitHub
for non-devs.
If you use Claude Code, GitHub becomes essential · automatic backup of your work, Vercel deploy in 1 push, grabbing open-source tools. 5 commands are enough, and Claude runs them for you.
AI agents:
the beginner
guide.
What an agent really is. The difference with a workflow. The 3 tasks in your week where an agent would make a difference. How to pick the first one.
An agent
that sorts your email
overnight.
80 emails → 3 urgent ones flagged every morning at 7. Step-by-step tutorial, you launch it, it runs. 1h45 of daily sorting becomes 15 min of reading.
An agent
that reads your contracts
in 2 minutes.
You drop in a PDF, you get back a sheet with the 12 critical clauses, the problematic passages, a risk score. 1h30 of reading → 20 min of review.
Hermes:
a local agent
step by step.
You want an agent that runs without going through the Claude API, total sovereignty. Setup, models, limits. 2-min version if you just want the result.
A sales tool,
built over
3 evenings.
Shirley (an insurance account manager) asked me for a hand. Three evenings, a sales tool now used in client meetings. The repeatable process, not the magic.
My watch
for tomorrow morning,
prepped overnight.
The real pipeline behind my AI Playbook and Business Radar newsletters. What runs overnight, what gets filtered, what's left for me in the morning. No hidden costs.
Karpathy,
in plain terms.
Andrej Karpathy put together a series of 8 videos that goes from "what's a neuron" all the way to building a full GPT-2. I give you the 15-min version — you keep the essentials without spending 14h on it.
Karpathy's
self-improving
agents.
A repo that kicks off a 5-min training run, lets an agent edit the code, compares the result, keeps it or reverts. Indefinitely. "Research on a shoestring", within reach in 30 min at home.
The LLM Wiki,
your second
brain.
Karpathy's idea: a personal wiki read by an LLM to answer in your place. When it's worth it, when it's overkill (Projects in Claude.ai is often enough), how to go about it.
Open source,
explained for non-devs.
The word is everywhere since AI took off. What it is, how companies make a living giving things away for free, why Mistral and DeepSeek are changing the game. 30 tools to try tomorrow. No jargon.
Run a real AI
on your own
machine.
Install an AI on your computer in under an hour, with Ollama and Open WebUI. Chat with your own documents (RAG). 6 use cases by profession. Step-by-step tutorial for Mac/Windows/Linux.
You've read it all.
Now what?
My AI Playbook newsletter goes out every Friday morning. My subagents scan 100+ sources during the week, I get the brief, you get the exact same email I do. That's how I stay up to date, and that's how you can stay up to date too. Unsubscribe in 1 click if it's not useful to you.
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