Joel Brilliant · Brisbane, Australia
I build and ship real products with a team of agents. And just me.
Self-taught operator. I use AI every day to run real work and ship real things, I wrote down exactly how I do it so anyone can copy it, and I set it up hands-on for people who would rather not work it out alone.
What I've built
Made with the same setup I share.
Real products, tools and client work, built with a stack of agents doing the heavy lifting. That same leverage is what the guide walks you through, so you can build your own.
What is real, what is illustrative
Real: the shipped products, the open-source workflow, the full inbox triage skill and the nine-skill kit. Illustrative: the Paper Ledger mockups and worked examples, labelled synthetic so I don't expose private inbox, client or workplace data. Time-saved numbers are example estimates, not guarantees.
This guide, written and built with the exact workflow it teaches, from the first draft to the page you're on.
Read it
A working dashboard I run client implementation work through, talking to it in plain language while it does the work.
In daily use · concept shownReshaping how a real electrical contracting business runs day to day, turning manual, scattered systems into ones that mostly run themselves.
Ongoing client work
A sports intelligence engine that reads games before kickoff and grades its own calls.
brill.bet
The agent stack I run my own work through, the sidekick setup the guide teaches you to build.
agents.itsbrill.aiA memory layer that gives my AI agents one shared memory across every tool I use, so they never lose the context.
Private infrastructureMore of it is open source on GitHub.
The free guide
How I actually use AI.
The exact setup I use every day, written down in plain language for professionals, small business owners and anyone non-techy. Free, all nine chapters, nine starter skills, no email needed.
Start here
Your first win, cost honesty, and the dashboard ladder: manual cockpit, read-only connection, scheduled brief.
Prompting properly
How to brief AI so it gets it right the first time, instead of the fifth.
The basic concepts
Context, memory, instructions, connectors and skills, in plain language.
Staying safe
What to sort out before you connect AI to anything that matters.
Connect AI to your work tools
Wiring it into the apps you already use, safely and in the right order.
Inbox, calendar, meetings and documents
The everyday workflows, done with your sidekick instead of by hand.
Skills: reusable workflows
Turn the work you repeat into a one-line skill you run every time.
Your dashboard
A simple manual cockpit first, then read-only connections, then a scheduled brief when you are ready.
The operating loop
How it all comes together into a rhythm you'll actually keep.
Honest cost note
The guide is free, and a free AI account is enough to start. To connect your own email, calendar or files later, many people end up on a paid AI plan at roughly US$20/month. That cost is yours with the tool provider, not me.
Open source: read or copy the markdown at github.com/joelbrilliant/how-i-actually-use-ai.
Work with me
Want it set up around your work?
If you'd rather not work it out from a guide, I set AI up hands-on, one-on-one, around how you actually work: your inbox, your calendar, the busywork you keep meaning to automate.
AI setup, one-on-one
We get on a call and wire AI into your real work. You walk away with it running and a setup that's yours, not a course you have to finish.
About
A bit more about me.
I'm an operator in Brisbane who builds and ships real products with AI.
I use AI every single day to run real work. People kept asking me the same thing, how do you actually get AI to do that, so I wrote it all down and gave it away. The approach is plain language and honest: the moves that work, nothing hidden, nothing oversold.