The AI playbook template

A playbook is a one-page document that teaches an AI (or a new hire) exactly how one task works in your business — the concept from Teaching an AI your way of working. This is the master template. Copy it, fill it in for one task, and paste the result at the start of any AI conversation about that task.

The template

# PLAYBOOK: [task name, e.g. "Drafting replies to new inquiries"]

## THE JOB
[One sentence: what the AI produces, for whom.]

## INPUTS
[What I'll paste in: an email, a form submission, meeting notes, a data export.]

## THE VOICE
[3-4 rules. Steal the output of a voice analysis if you have one.
e.g. "Warm, direct, short sentences. No exclamation marks. Sign off with
first name only."]

## HARD RULES — never break these
- [e.g. Never quote prices; say a person will confirm.]
- [e.g. Never claim a completion date.]
- [e.g. Never mention other clients by name.]

## ESCALATE INSTEAD OF ANSWERING when:
- [e.g. The customer sounds angry or mentions a refund.]
- [e.g. Anything legal, medical, or safety-related comes up.]
On escalation, output only "FLAG FOR HUMAN:" plus a one-line reason.

## OUTPUT FORMAT
[Exactly what the response should look like — sections, length, structure.]

## EXAMPLES
GOOD: [paste a real example of the task done well]
BAD: [paste or describe what wrong looks like, and why]

How to use it

One playbook per task — small documents stay accurate, big manuals rot. Start with the task where you correct AI output most often; your corrections are the HARD RULES section. Test it on five real inputs, fix what it gets wrong, and date it like any living document.

Two ready-made specializations of this template: Inquiry-reply playbook and Report-deck playbook. And if the playbook works so well you want it running automatically instead of pasted by hand — that’s the point where it becomes an automation project; scope it with The project-scoping interview prompt.