AI Training
From zero to a working AI system in 60 minutes.
“A paint-by-numbers guide to AI infrastructure for absolute beginners.”
Most AI advice skips the most important part: where your files go. This guide teaches you to build a personal system where prompts, conversations, and project files live in one organised place — so every AI session builds on the last.
Audience
Anyone who has never used AI tools before
Outcome
A personal workspace where your AI work lives in one organised place
Time
About 60 minutes for the full setup
These instructions are a foundation you can build on — start here, then expand as you grow.
1. Why people struggle · 2. Two ways to work · 3. The 10-part curriculum · 4. Practice sandbox · 5. Key concepts · 6. Getting the guide
Why people struggle to use the technology
The problem was never the AI. It’s everything that comes after.
The people who make this work don’t write better prompts — they know where their files go.
Two ways to work with AI
Same tools. Same models. Different infrastructure.
Repeat forever
Context compounds
The bottleneck was never the model. It’s the system around it.
Obsidian is a free, offline-first note editor. obsidian.md (No affiliation.)
YouTube is full of beginner guides on setting up Obsidian — help is easy to find.
What you’ll learn
Ten parts, zero code required. Start with the first three today.
New to AI? Start with parts 1–3 (about 45 minutes). Everything after that builds on this foundation.
What you need
AI accounts, file management tools, and the basics of Markdown.
15 min
Set up your workspace
Install Obsidian, create your folder structure, and write your personal profile.
15 min
Your first AI conversation
Custom instructions, file uploads, and your first reusable prompt.
15 min
Your prompt library
Six tested prompts for research, planning, summarising, review, teaching, and exploration.
20 min
Getting unstuck
Six diagnostic prompts for common blockers — from “I don’t know what I don’t know” to “I’ve been going in circles.”
15 min
What AI gets right and wrong
Three failure modes every user should understand: hallucination, sycophancy, and user bias.
10 min
Building your rhythm
A sustainable weekly workflow. Minutes, not hours. Paste profile, paste prompt, save response.
5 min
Where this can take you
Case studies, adversarial analysis, and a quality assurance framework for your AI output.
10 min
How projects grow
Three stages: prototype (minutes), experiment (days), production (weeks). Know which stage you’re in.
10 min
Where to go from here
Personal AI Infrastructure philosophy. Building a system that scales with you.
5 min
Practice Sandbox
Markdown Vault + AI Copilot
Practice structure, saving, and context reuse in a safe, temporary training environment.
Key concepts
Three failure modes to watch for, and the one principle that changes everything.
Hallucination
The factory produces defective output.
AI generates confident, well-structured responses that are factually wrong. There is no red warning light — hallucinated text looks identical to accurate text.
Defense: Verify claims independently. Cross-reference. Never cite AI output as a primary source.
Sycophancy
The factory tells you what you want to hear.
AI tends to agree with you, validate your assumptions, and avoid pushing back on flawed reasoning. It is optimised for helpfulness, not honesty.
Defense: Explicitly ask for counterarguments. Use adversarial prompts. Push back on agreement.
User bias
You control what goes into the factory.
The frame you bring shapes the output you get. If you only ask for evidence supporting your view, that is exactly what you will receive.
Defense: Provide multiple perspectives in your prompt. Ask for the strongest counterargument to your position.
Context compounding
The people getting real value from AI aren’t using better models. They build context systems — organised, reusable knowledge that makes every session more valuable than the last.
Infrastructure beats intelligence. Every time.
Ready to start?
Download the full guide — all ten parts, prompt templates, appendices, and glossary. It’s a plain Markdown file. Open it in any text editor, or feed it to an AI assistant for a personalised walkthrough.