noteboardAdd project notes and constraints before asking AI
A question gets more useful when the background is visible. Add what you are trying to do, who it matters to, and the limits you need to work within. A few separate notes are enough to begin; they can stay beside the suggestions so you can keep checking the fit.
Suppose you are considering an onboarding service for small design agencies. Notes about repeated handoff emails, missing client files, and a limited first budget give the session a concrete subject. Ask AI to expand the offer, suggest alternatives, combine two approaches, or challenge a particular assumption.
Brainstorming with AI can happen at more than one stage. Use it to explore an early question or return with a direction you have already chosen. You decide which kind of help is useful for the work in front of you.
Example: explore a small service before building a product
Imagine the agency-onboarding idea in the demo. You have noticed a problem but do not yet know which part a customer would pay you to handle. A useful brainstorm can turn that uncertainty into a few approaches to discuss.
The following is an illustrative planning example. It shows how a suggestion can become a more specific idea after you review it, rather than presenting an AI response as evidence of demand.
A request grounded in the project
- Your starting notes
- Small agencies repeatedly chase files and send similar kickoff emails. The first offer needs to be manageable by one person.
- The request
- Suggest three ways to handle part of onboarding manually, and explain what each would help us learn.
- What you might keep
- An onboarding audit, a done-for-you setup, and a small paid pilot as alternatives to compare with prospective customers.
Make the suggestions your own
AI results arrive as proposals for you to review. Read the wording, change the parts that need context, and keep the ideas you want on the board. Dismiss a suggestion when it repeats something you have considered or relies on a condition that does not apply.
An AI thinking partner can suggest another angle, but the useful decision still depends on what you know. If it proposes a client portal before you have tested the service, you might keep the underlying idea and rewrite it as a manual trial. The board then holds the version you actually intend to explore.
Choose what belongs in this request
Select a few notes for a close look, include their connected ideas, or use the active board for a broader session. Preview the context before asking so you can see whether the relevant background is present. The focused-context workflow explains how selected notes, connected ideas, and the active board shape the request.
Park a worthwhile tangent when it belongs to another round. You can keep a future software idea while asking about a service you could try now. That makes it easier to compare the response with the question you actually asked.