Check before you send
Task: Check the draft against your notes before you send it.
Why this matters: AI drafts sound sure of themselves. Sounding sure is not the same as being right, and your name is on the send.
The prompt (copy and paste)
Use this after the AI writes a draft. Paste in your notes and the draft.
Check the draft below against my notes.
List:
1. Each claim that IS in my notes (quote the line)
2. Each claim that is NOT in my notes (it may be made up)
3. Anything important that's missing
4. The one fact that, if wrong, breaks the whole draft
Don't rewrite the draft. Only check it.
My notes:
[paste notes]
Draft:
[paste draft]The AI can get the check wrong too. Use its list as a pointer, then look for yourself.
Before and after
Before: The AI read a short email thread and wrote this. It looks ready to forward:
"Q3 churn dropped 18% after we launched the new onboarding wizard on 12 March. Finance confirmed the payback period is 4.2 months. Recommend rolling the wizard to all regions next Monday; legal has no concerns."
(Churn means customers who leave.)
After: You check it against the thread. The 18% isn't there. Neither is the date. Nobody from Finance or Legal wrote anything. "All regions next Monday" was never discussed. So you cut what you can't find. You turn the rest into questions:
"Can someone share the churn numbers since the new onboarding wizard launched? Before we talk about a wider rollout, I'd like Finance and Legal to take a look."
It's less exciting. It's also true.
Check it (3 things)
- Find it. Can you point to the line in your notes for every name, number and date?
- Made up? Did it add people, quotes, or "X confirmed" that you never gave it? Delete them, or turn them into questions.
- Not a done deal. Is anything that needs a "yes" from someone written as if it's already agreed?
Pick one of these and do it every time. It's the same check you'd give a new teammate's draft. The tool changed. The standard didn't.
Do this now
Before the next AI-written message leaves your desk today, run check 1. Count how many things you couldn't find in your notes.
After you try it
Did this produce something you could use, and what did you have to correct?
Email a reply, or keep a note for yourself. The useful part is the correction — that is the skill, not the first draft.
Email hello@ainewbie.org