AI Foundations: Charting Your Course

Updated October 28, 2026 [Do your own research, AI evolves fast]

This is not an exhaustive tech breakdown. This is what you need to know to pick the right tool for the right task. All platforms listed below have a free tier and a paid tier around $20/month, with cheaper entry tiers now available from a couple of them if you just want to try one out. Start with whatever you're most comfortable with. You can always add another later.

If you only pick one: Use whatever you're already comfortable with. You'll get better results from a tool you know how to push than from a better tool you're still figuring out. Overall, it helps to get to know one tool very well and have it know you well, then use it to teach you how to do anything else.

• Use one AI to troubleshoot another. If Gemini keeps giving you something weird, ask Claude: I'm trying to get Gemini to do X and it keeps doing Y. How should I phrase this?

• Ask AI how to do the thing with AI. Before you spend an hour figuring something out, ask your preferred tool: I want to do [thing] in [other tool]. Give me step-by-step instructions. AI is an expert on AI. Let it teach you as you build.

Quick reference for doing things from my sessions in each platform.

This is the single most useful hack for working with AI output.

• Copy the AI response (click the copy icon)

• Open your Notes app (on Mac) or TextEdit (also on Mac) or Notepad (on PC)

• Paste the response there. This strips out all the weird markdown formatting, horizontal lines, bold artifacts, and spacing issues.

• Copy it again from Notes

• Paste it wherever it actually needs to go (Google Docs, email, Canva, anywhere)

Why this matters: AI tools format their responses using markdown (a coding language for text). When you paste directly into other apps, that formatting comes through as messy lines, random bold text, broken spacing and very AI-looking. The Notes app strips all of that out and gives you clean text.

Use these as-is or adapt them. They're organized by what you're trying to do.

Use these when you've drafted something (an email to a client, a social media post, a trip proposal, marketing copy) and want honest feedback before you send it.

Use when you want feedback from three different perspectives. Run it in a fresh chat so previous context doesn't soften the response.

Use for anything client-facing where you want a thorough review across multiple dimensions.

Use any of these when you need the AI to stop being nice.

Be objective:

Find blind spots:

Tear it apart:

Hurt my feelings:

Use a meeting notetaker during your meetings so you have the transcript. (my favorite is Granola, you can use this link for my referral link)

Use when you need AI to walk you through something you don't know how to do.

Use when you know how to do something in one AI tool but need to do it in a different one.

A brief sets the direction before you start creating. Prompting tells AI what to do right now. Briefing tells AI about the problem, the audience, and the idea so it can work with you across a whole project. Five minutes of briefing saves you fifty minutes of iteration.

Briefing explains the problem, audience, and idea. Use when you need AI to understand the big picture or work on multiple pieces of a larger project.

• Prompting tells AI what to do right now. Use when you need the thing done or have a clear output that doesn't require nuance.

• CONTEXT: Your background. What's happening with or around you, or the client.

• AUDIENCE: Who this is for. What they care about.

• GOAL: What you want this to do. What success looks like.

• CONSTRAINTS: The limits. Length, tone, format, timeline, what to avoid.

• STANDARDS: What good looks like. Examples of yes and no.

Copy and fill in before you start any content task:

Use this every time you create a piece of branded content with AI.

• Load your brand guide: Make sure your workspace has the brand guidelines, your About Me, and your voice guide

• Brief the task: Use the brief template (Context, Audience, Goal, Constraints, Standards) for what you're creating

• Generate: Let AI give you a first draft. Never accept version 1.

• Review against brand standards: Check colors, voice, accuracy, and promises. Does it match the brand? Does it sound like you?

• Polish and post: Remove the AI fingerprints. Add your touch. Make it human. The final 20% is 100% you.

Tell the tool NOT to do these things..

• Bullet lists on every slide

• Equal visual weight on all content

• Generic web fonts instead of brand typography

• Rewriting your approved copy (especially Canva)

• Applying every brand color at once (use two core plus one accent)

• Centering text boxes (specify top-aligned)

• Long, full-width text blocks

• Filler slides (Conclusion, Thanks for watching, Let's connect)

• Download your brand guidelines as a PDF (or have the document ready)

• Open your workspace for brand content

• Upload the brand guidelines PDF to your workspace files

• Add instructions that tell AI how to use them:

Your brand guidelines PDF was made for humans, however, AI can't interpret a swatch page or infer a usage rule from a photo grid and sometimes guesses at anything that isn't spelled out in words.

That's why content can look almost right and still feel off. The colors are close but not exact. The tone is professional but not yours. The logo gets used, but in ways the guidelines never intended. Almost right at volume becomes brand drift.

The fix is giving AI your brand in a format it can follow.

• Colors as hex codes, not names. Dream Vacations blue means nothing to AI. Use the hex codes - #00A3D9 and #204D8A. Include which colors are primary, which are accents, and the ratio (two core colors plus one accent, not all of them at once).

• Logo rules as instructions. Upload the logo file and tell it specifically how to treat it (e.g. use the 2-color logo on light backgrounds, the 1-color white logo on dark backgrounds.) And outline specific rules - never stretch, rotate, recolor, or recreate the logo. Leave clear space equal to the height of the pin icon on all sides. AI follows written rules. It ignores visual examples of spacing.

• Fonts by name. List the exact font names and when to use each (headlines, body, accents). If AI can't access the font (most can't), tell it what to substitute or manually upload the font so AI can use it.

• Voice and tone as ranges. Always professional makes everything stiff. Warm and personal, like a trusted advisor talking to a friend. Professional but never corporate. Use contractions. Avoid jargon. gives AI room to write naturally within the brand.

• What good looks like, and what doesn't. Give it one or two examples of on-brand content and one or two examples of what to avoid. AI calibrates faster from examples than from rules alone.

Not every AI tool reads brand information the same way.

• Text-first tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini): Upload the brand PDF plus a written brand kit document with the rules above. The PDF gives AI the raw material. The written doc tells it what to do with it. Both matter.

• Image generation tools (ChatGPT Images, Gemini Imagen, Firefly): These tools respond to visual references and style descriptors more than written rules. Upload example images that show the brand's visual style. Describe the look in words: Clean, modern layouts. Warm photography with natural light. No clip art, no over-saturated colors, no generic stock.

• Design tools with native brand kits (Canva): Set up the brand kit inside the platform (colors, fonts, logos). The tool pulls from its own settings, not from a document you upload. Still add written instructions about what not to do, because AI in design tools will still take liberties with layout, copy, and color ratios.

This is the most common mistake: writing brand instructions as a list of rules - AI follows absolutes literally.

Write your brand kit as preferences with reasoning:

• Instead of: Never use informal language

• Try: Default to professional and warm. Use conversational phrasing (contractions, short sentences) in social media and client emails. Use more formal language in proposals and official materials.

• Instead of: Always use brand colors only

• Try: Primary palette is navy (#204D8A) and cyan (#00A3D9). Use gold (#FEBD11) as an accent, no more than 15% of any layout. Black for body text. Off-white (#F4EDE3) or white for backgrounds. Do not introduce colors outside this palette.

The goal is a kit that's specific enough for AI to follow and flexible enough that the output doesn't feel robotic.

Load it into whatever workspace you use most for content creation. If you built a workspace in Session 3, that's the place. The brand kit goes in alongside your About Me doc and voice guide. All three work together: the About Me tells AI who you are, the voice guide tells it how you sound, and the brand kit tells it what the brand looks like and how it speaks.

If you work across multiple platforms, keep the written brand kit as a standalone source of truth (e.g. Google Doc or PDF) that you can upload anywhere.

As a travel advisor, you ARE the brand AND yourself. Your About Me doc captures your personal voice. The brand guidelines capture the brand voice. Both can live in your workspace but you have to let AI know where to lean in and when.

Your personal voice shines in: client emails, social media, your blog, your intro copy

The brand voice leads in: official marketing materials, branded templates, co-branded content

AI takes liberties with branded content. Check for:

• Invented details: AI may fabricate resort features, room types, or amenities that don't exist

• Made-up pricing or deals: Never let AI generate pricing or promotional offers without verification

• Logo and color drift: AI tools may swap brand colors or misapply the palette

• Copy rewrites: Canva and other tools may silently rewrite your approved copy

• Tone mismatch: AI may default to generic travel-industry language instead of the brand voice

• Overpromising: AI loves superlatives. Check that nothing implies guarantees the brand can't back up

Your voice guide teaches AI how you write so it stops sounding like a robot and starts sounding like you. Build it once, use it everywhere.

Gather 3-5 pieces of YOUR writing. Emails to clients, social media posts, texts, voice notes, blog posts, trip proposals. Whatever feels most like you at your rawest and your best.

• Custom instructions: Always on. Applies to every chat.

• Inside a project/workspace: Scoped to one workspace (e.g., your Client Communications workspace).

• Attached to a chat: One-time use, dropped in when you need it.

• Uploaded to any new tool: Perplexity, Canva, Gamma, any new AI tool you try.

If you want a more detailed voice guide, use this after gathering 5-10 writing samples.

Read through the analysis. Some of it will feel dead-on. Some will feel off. Both reactions are useful. Tell the AI what it got wrong, what it missed, or what needs more weight:

Go back and forth until the analysis actually feels like you on the page.

Your About Me doc is AI's operating manual for working with you. It tells AI who you are, how you work, and what you need. This is not a resume or a bio.

Fill in whatever you can below, even messy or incomplete. Bullet points are fine. Then paste all of it into your AI of choice along with this prompt:

Read what it gives you back. Correct anything that's off. Add anything it missed. This is a first draft, not a finished product.

• Role, title, industry:

• Background (where you're from, career path, relevant history):

• Specific expertise or areas you're known for:

• Principles you work by, even when it's inconvenient:

• Anything you will not compromise on in your work:

• Anything that shapes how you think or work (life circumstances, working style quirks):

• Patterns you want AI to flag when it sees them:

• How you like to receive output (bullet points vs. prose, short vs. detailed, file format):

• Pet peeves:

• Communication style you want back from AI (formal, casual, blunt, encouraging):

• List the platforms and tools you already work in regularly:

• Anything you do often enough that AI should expect it:

• What does good look like for you specifically? Not the industry definition. Yours:

• Your travel specialty or niche (luxury, adventure, family, destination weddings, cruises, groups)

• Your client communication style (formal, warm, casual, detailed)

• How you like information organized (bullets, short paragraphs, detailed breakdowns)

• What good looks like to you (polished but personal, data-backed, warm but professional)

• Things AI should never do (make promises about pricing, invent resort details, use a tone that doesn't match yours)

• Things AI should always do (ask clarifying questions, cite sources when giving destination info, match your level of warmth)

Pull together whatever you have of these. You don't need all of them, but the more you give it, the better the first draft:

• Resume

• LinkedIn profile, downloaded as a PDF (profile page, three dots or Resources menu, then Save to PDF)

• Past performance reviews

• Testimonials or recommendations

• A few pieces of writing that sound like you (these help with tone even though this isn't your formal voice guide)

If your AI tool already has memory or is connected to your inbox, drive/dropbox or desktop, you can ask it to pull from what it knows and has access to.

Then follow up with:

Pro Tip: Don't force this into exactly one page. If your real version needs five or six pages because you have a lot of relevant material, that's fine. What matters is that everything in it is actually useful, not padded out to hit a page count.

A workspace is a dedicated space in AI that holds your context, files, and instructions for a specific area of your work. It keeps your client work out of your personal stuff and makes sure that context and content from one project or client doesn’t bleed into another.

Examples for travel advisors:

• My Business (your About Me, voice guide, general business instructions)

• A specific client or trip (their preferences, trip details, research)

• Marketing and content (brand guidelines, content calendar, social media templates)

• Supplier research (preferred partners, rate comparisons, destination guides)

• Instructions: The rules for this workspace. How AI should behave, what it should know, what it should never do.

• Files: Your documents, references, context. Voice guide, About Me, brand guidelines, client info.

• Chat: Your conversation history, scoped to this workspace.

The shortcut: Ask AI to write the instructions for you.

Memory: What AI picks up from your conversations over time. Automatic, sometimes wrong, platform-locked (if you switch platforms, it stays behind).

Documents: What you deliberately build and give to AI. Intentional, portable, yours to update (if you switch platforms, it comes with you).

The relationship goes both ways. You can ask AI what it needs from you:

Pro Tip: Every time AI gets something wrong or you have a specific way you want something done, tell it to add it to the project memory or manually add it to the project instructions.

Use this as a starting point in any tool. Adjust for each project:

A connector lets AI read from, and in some cases act inside, an app you already use: your email, your calendar, your Drive. Instead of copying a client brief into a chat by hand every time, you point AI at the actual document. Instead of describing your week, you let it check your actual calendar. Look through the ones it has (and check back periodically because more are added all the time) and connect the ones that you use (e.g. Gmail, Canva, Stripe, Asana, Notion, Quickbooks, Google Docs, Dropbox, etc)

• Check the permission level. Some connectors are read-only (AI can see something but not change it). Others let AI draft, send, or create. Those are different levels of risk, so check which one you're granting before you approve it.

• Test with something low-stakes first. Ask it to find one file or summarize one thread before you trust it with anything that matters.

• Connecting is optional. Pasting content by hand works fine if you're not ready to grant account access, and some information should stay out of a connected tool regardless: anything client-confidential you haven't gotten permission to share.

Once you’ve figured out how to get AI to do something well, a skill lets you save that process so you never have to set it up again. A skill is a saved set of instructions, context, and sometimes connected tools that tells AI exactly how to handle a specific type of task. You build it once, then trigger it whenever you need it.

• When to use: Use skills when you need a tool to perform a specific multi-step action, integrate external service APIs, or apply specialized workflows.

• How to use: Enable or invoke the skill in your tool settings/workspace prompt, allowing the AI assistant to call on the specific skill automatically when required by the task.

• Why this matters: Without a skill, every time you want AI to do something you’ve done before, you’re re-explaining the brief, the format, the tone, the constraints. With a skill, you say “do the thing” and it already knows what the thing is.

• A skill that turns a meeting transcript into your standard recap format and follow-up email, in your voice, every time

• A skill that drafts a trip proposal from a client intake form using your template, your tone, and your preferred structure

• A skill that takes a destination and generates a social media post series following your content guidelines

• A skill that runs a weekly check on your inbox and flags threads that need a follow-up

• A skill that formats supplier rate comparisons into the spreadsheet layout you always use

• Gemini: Skills are rolling out now as a replacement for Gems. You’ll find them in the Gemini app menu. They work inline inside any chat rather than in a separate window.

• Claude: Skills live inside Projects and can also be built as standalone instructions that Claude calls on when a task matches. Look under your project settings or ask Claude to help you build one.

• ChatGPT: The equivalent lives inside Projects and the newer plugin/workspace agent system. Set up project-level instructions that define how specific task types should be handled.

A few of my favs -See my referral codes

Questions, comments, 1:1 sessions? Reach out to me at: hello@undeniableideas.com