Ship Your First AI Feature

The short version

Your first AI feature doesn't fail in the model. It fails in the un-scoped edges, the prompt that drifts, and the lack of any way to tell if it got worse. The path that works: scope it narrow enough to actually finish; write the prompt as a spec, not a wish; build a tiny eval *before* you tune anything; add guardrails for the wrong-answer case; then ship behind a flag and watch. The trap to avoid: polishing the happy path while ignoring what happens when the model is unsure or wrong: that's the experience users remember. The full guide walks the whole sequence with a concrete example, including a starter eval harness, the guardrail patterns, and a pre-launch checklist.