Adding AI features without bolting on a chatbot

The default move for "add AI to our product" is a chat box in the bottom-right corner. It demos well and gets used twice.

Put the model in the loop, not in a corner

The AI features that stick are the ones wired directly into an existing workflow. Generating the thing the user was about to write, ranking the list they were about to sort, drafting the reply they were about to type.

Ground it in your data

A model with no context makes things up confidently. Retrieval-augmented generation grounds answers in your content, so the output is useful and on-brand.

1. Index your real data
2. Retrieve the relevant slice at request time
3. Generate with that context in the prompt
4. Evaluate continuously

Measure it like a feature

Treat quality as a number. Evals catch regressions before your users do, the same way tests catch broken code.