The Hands-on AI Playbook
Hi, I’m James
Section titled “Hi, I’m James”I teach AI strategy at UC Berkeley Haas Executive Education, including the largest AI program in its portfolio. Before that I spent nearly a decade at Microsoft, and I’ve served as a Chief Product Officer and Chief Information Officer across global enterprises and startups.
I built this playbook because the best way to accelerate innovation is to make complex things simple — and then share them freely. Everything here comes from real work: building AI systems, teaching live cohorts, and learning alongside a global community of builders.
It’s free, it’s open, and it gets updated constantly. I hope you find something here that saves you time, sparks an idea, or helps you move faster.
I’m based in Austin, Texas.
More about me and the story behind this playbook →
What’s New
Section titled “What’s New”Playbook updates, plus notable releases from Anthropic, OpenAI, and the other AI platforms I follow.
Plugin 9.2: best practices for building skills
Plugin 9.2 adds applying-skill-best-practices: the standards for building any Agent Skill, applied alongside your platform's own skill creator.
Plugin 9.3: keep your skills current
Plugin 9.3 adds auditing-agent-skills, which checks the skills you already have for anything gone out of date, plus a playbook guide to building skills well.
Plugin 9.0: your framework files move to framework/
Plugin 9.0 moves each workflow's framework files from outputs/ to framework/<workflow>/, so your records stay committed and apart from what workflows produce.
Keep in touch
Section titled “Keep in touch”I write Graymatter — Master AI. Master Yourself. Build What Matters.
It’s a weekly newsletter for builders drowning in AI noise: practical guidance on putting AI to work in your workflow and business, alongside the personal leadership that makes it stick. Paid subscribers get hands-on tutorials, videos, and playbooks. Subscribe →
You can also find me on LinkedIn or at jamesgray.ai.