How AI is used here
The AI does the preparation. The judgment stays human.
“I use AI openly, in research and drafting, the way I’d use any good instrument. The question that matters is whether the thinking and the judgment are mine, and nothing goes out under my name that I haven’t made my own.” Ruben F. Salinas, PhD
Where it is used
Openly, and named.
- The writing. The essays, the book and the program materials were researched and drafted with AI assistance and edited by their author. The book says so in its own appendix.
- This site. Its pages were drafted with AI assistance and approved by the author.
- The Daimon. An AI reflection companion built on the author’s work, running on Delphi, a commercial service.
- The Debrief. AI tools and the Daimon prepare a brief. The author reads it and brings the judgment.
Where it is not
What AI never does in this work.
It never diagnoses, never assigns a developmental stage, never interprets dreams and never speaks as the author. It makes no decision for you. No model makes the decision you have been deferring, and none overrides the criteria you wrote.
You are never asked to put health or money figures into an AI tool. Council sessions are never recorded or transcribed by AI without everyone’s consent.
For members, and for anyone
The five rules of the pen.
1
Write first, then ask.
Anything that is yours to author starts in your own hand: your criteria, your letters, your decisions, the line in The Account. AI can critique the draft afterward.
2
Ask it to disagree.
Left alone, a model leans toward agreeing with you. Ask for the strongest case against your view, and for the obstacle you skipped.
3
Find your center before you prompt.
AI speeds up whatever state you bring to it. A question asked from a spiral at midnight gets a fluent answer to the spiral.
4
Check what matters.
Test it against a source, a person or the criteria you wrote down. Fluency proves nothing.
5
Say where AI helped.
In any work that carries your name, credit it the way you would credit a colleague.
Rooms kept free of it
Some things stay in your own words.
The weekly hour with the people closest to you. Letters of thanks, apologies and repairs. The first draft of anything you will answer for.
The Daimon on Delphi
Read the terms before you begin.
Delphi stores conversations on servers in the United States under its own privacy policy and terms, keeps them for as long as it needs them to run its service, and may use what people write to improve that service. Mastery Code does not own or operate Delphi, and cannot promise that nothing you share will help improve its models. Write to the Daimon knowing a company will store it.
Who is holding the pen? Find out in seven minutes, free.
Prefer to read first? The weekly essay is at masterylessons.com.