Paths you can take next
Path A · Make your week compound
Goal: one Project that starts every chat already briefed.- Create a Project for your real team or portfolio.
- Add a short custom instruction and three source files you actually reuse.
- Run five real tasks inside it before you invent a second Project.
Path B · Ship one skill
Goal: stop retyping the same procedure.- Pick a workflow you did twice this month.
- Write a skill with trigger phrases, rules, and one before/after example.
- Install it, trigger it from a real request, then tighten once.
Path C · Connect one system safely
Goal: reach without oversharing.- Connect one everyday service.
- Set writes to needs approval.
- Run one read task, then one deliberate failure probe.
Path D · Practice agent judgment
Goal: get comfortable with loops that can act.- Re-run the sharp vs fuzzy loop on a real ops task.
- Write a definition of done before you start.
- Read the lap log, not only the deliverable.
Books and long reads
O’Reilly ebook-style deep dive on prompting patterns, evaluation, and failure modes beyond any one vendor.Open Chip Huyen’s systems view: evaluation, RAG, agents, and production trade-offs. Good once you outgrow chat tips.Open Broader systems literacy if your role sits next to model deployment, data quality, and monitoring.OpenPractice challenges
Do these on your real work, not toy prompts.- Same brief, three models once a week for a month. Keep a personal scoreboard of when Opus actually earned the upgrade.
- One Cowork folder job every Friday: renewals pack, expense cleanup, board appendix draft.
- Red-team one workflow from Safety before you automate it.
- Write one skill that removes a repeated Slack or email ritual.