It started with a book.
For nearly forty years I worked to restore a lost American classic — a memoir locked away behind a dialect no modern reader could get through. When AI got good enough to help, I brought the project to it the way everyone does: I typed what I wanted and hoped.
Some sessions were remarkable. Others were two weeks of confident, wandering, half-right answers that ended with me ready to quit. The difference, I finally realized, was never the model and never the prompt. It was who was driving.
One night I stopped asking and started directing. In plain English I laid down the rules — who decides (me), what happens before anything proceeds (my approval), the standard for claims (show your sources or say you can’t), and what I wouldn’t tolerate (filler, flattery, guesswork dressed up as fact). Then I had it write those rules down so I’d never have to give the speech again. The next session did in twenty minutes what the previous two weeks hadn’t. That rules document is the DUI.