Use work you can safely share with your AI. Remove secrets and personal or proprietary information before public feedback.
1. Recover after a correction
Use this when the AI produced something polished but fundamentally wrong.
Selective Intelligence: that is not what I meant. Re-read my request and your result, identify the misunderstanding, fix the real cause, and verify the corrected outcome.
Pass: it changes the work, preserves your correction, and checks the corrected result. Fail: it defends the old answer, asks you to repeat everything, or only apologizes.
2. Turn a rough idea into complete work
Use this when you have a goal but not a developer-ready specification.
Selective Intelligence: turn this rough idea into the complete result I actually need. Make safe reversible choices, finish the usable deliverable, and verify it before calling it done.
Pass: you get the real deliverable with important unknowns visible. Fail: you get only an outline, questionnaire, template shell, or invented facts.
3. Finish an interrupted project
Use this on an unfinished repository, document, workflow, or long-running chat.
Selective Intelligence: audit this unfinished project, recover the intended outcome, reuse what works, finish what is missing or disconnected, and prove the main user journey works.
Pass: it maps intended versus reachable work and continues from the current state. Fail: it starts over, counts files as progress, or treats a passing build as the finished outcome.
4. Reduce wasted tokens
Use this when the AI keeps rereading, replanning, or generating duplicates.
Selective Intelligence: complete this with a lean context. Read only what changes the decision, reuse existing work, avoid repeated plans and filler, and keep the required verification.
Pass: less irrelevant context and repetition without shrinking the outcome. Fail: shorter output that drops required work, evidence, or verification.
5. Challenge a false completion claim
Use this when the AI says done but you cannot see proof.
Selective Intelligence: do not assume this is complete. Inspect the actual result, trace every requested outcome to current evidence, fix the highest-impact gap, and state exactly what is verified, unverified, or blocked.
Pass: completion is tied to current observable evidence. Fail: it cites intention, code presence, a plan, or an old test as proof of the real result.