💼 Unlock professional results with AI

Hey there.

AI is unlocking professional-level outcomes for everyone.

New innovations can now automate API AI model selection to save you money, handle entire browser workflows, generate production-ready interfaces, and help you manage business relationships at scale.

The tools exist. The capabilities are evolving. 

Inside The Rundown AI University, we're sharing resources that help professionals reduce API anxiety, automate repetitive tasks across multiple platforms, improve on standard app design, and streamline time spent scaling personalized communications.

Here's how this week’s guides and workshops can help you achieve professional-level results:

Choose the most cost-effective model every time

Most professionals avoid OpenAI's API entirely due to unpredictable costs and do most of their work on ChatGPT's web interface because it feels safer. They’re often missing out on the speed, customization, and automation that are unlocked with an API key.

The uncertainty they feel is real, though. A day of complex requests can consume a ChatGPT subscription’s worth of tokens, especially if you’re using the wrong model. Simple tasks get routed to expensive models that cost significantly more than necessary. But if you default to underpowered models, you may never realise the potential of your AI-powered workflows.

Early adopters are building system that evaluate each request and automatically:

• Routes basic tasks (email drafts, simple analysis) to cost-effective models

• Escalates complex reasoning (strategic analysis, multi-step problems) to premium models 

• Implements advanced techniques to reduce token used in repeat requests

• Provides real-time cost monitoring with budget alerts and emergency rate limiting

• Enables batched processing for non-urgent tasks at 50% discount rates

What this means for you: Finally unlock API-powered automation without cost anxiety. You get predictable, transparent pricing that scales intelligently with your actual needs, plus the speed and customization impossible through web interfaces.

Watch 'How to build a smart AI orchestrator for your project' and gain confidence to implement API-driven workflows by starting a 14-day trial at The Rundown AI University.

Get your browser to work for you

The browser is probably where most of your work happens, and it’s overdue an AI upgrade. Currently, too many tasks require the same mind-numbing sequence. We open tabs, navigate pages, copy information, switch contexts, and repeat… it’s a repetitive process that demands constant human attention.

AI solutions that can take action in your workflows, without you hovering over them, allow you to step away from tasks that kept you at the desk, and spend more time adding value by managing the results of those processes.

Using Gemini's advanced reasoning capabilities, you can:

• Automate multi-site research workflows that adapt to different page structures and navigation patterns

• Extract and compile data from forms, directories, and databases without manual clicking or copying

• Monitor competitive intelligence sources and generate automated summary reports

• Handle dynamic content interactions, including dropdowns, filters, and pagination across platforms

• Process bulk tasks like lead qualification or market analysis while maintaining context between sites

What this means for you: Tasks that used to consume entire afternoons now run in the background while you focus on higher-value work. You can start to automate sales prospect research, marketing competitive analysis, consultant client preparation, or any workflow that involves repetitive browser navigation.

Watch 'Automate any browser task with Google Gemini' and eliminate hours of manual web work by starting a 14-day trial at The Rundown AI University.

Finally build solutions that look like real apps

In every industry, there is a need for more AI-powered tools. Even internally, in your team, there are almost certainly opportunities for custom solutions like sales dashboards, client portals, project trackers, workflow automations, inventory management systems, employee onboarding platforms, financial reporting tools, customer support ticketing systems, resource scheduling applications.

With the right tools and tenacity, anyone can now build functional software with natural language prompts. But making those apps look like experiences people actually want to use is often an afterthought. Design is its own domain.

Whether you want to impress your employer with a time-saving tool, create a customer offer for a client, or even monetise your own app, now you can:

• Generate complete interface layouts using AI, then fine-tune typography, spacing, and visual hierarchy manually

• Customize colors, styling, and branding elements in real-time without consuming additional API credits

• Export clean, production-ready code that integrates seamlessly with Cursor, Replit, and other development environments

• Build internal tools that teams actually want to use instead of functional-but-ugly applications

• Transform AI-generated prototypes into polished business applications through direct element manipulation

What this means for you: Design is about more than just aesthetics. Using AI to make the experience more fluid and efficient helps you retain users and achieve better results from your app. Stop managing the complexity gap between codebases and production-ready prototypes.

Watch 'How to design perfect interfaces with v0's Design Mode' and create app designs that integrate with your existing development workflow by starting a 14-day trial at The Rundown AI University.

Streamline important professional relationships

Effective follow-up is crucial in many fields. But manual relationship management creates bottlenecks that limit growth, important prospects go cold between touchpoints, client relationships deteriorate due to inconsistent communication, and networking partnership opportunities stall because someone forgot to check in.

This Tuesday at 3 PM ET, we're hosting a workshop to show you how to build AI agents that automate and personalize prospect follow-ups.

Keenan Koppenhaver, Technical PMM at Retool, is joining us to show you how to:

• Build a custom AI agent inside Retool to automate and personalize follow-up messages to sales prospects

• Understand what makes an AI agent different from traditional workflows and automations

• Equip your agent with both off-the-shelf and custom tools to gather data and take action across your stack

What this means for you: These principles apply to any scenario where consistent, personalized communication drives results. You can streamline processes for sales prospects, client relationships, partnership management, investor updates, or vendor coordination without losing the personal attention that creates lasting value in your career. 

Reserve your spot for ‘Supercharge your prospect follow ups with an AI agent’ and discover how to build intelligent relationship management systems by starting a 14-day trial at The Rundown AI University.

See you inside,
The Rundown Team

P.S. Last Friday's workshop covered advanced prompting techniques for OpenAI's o3 and o3-Pro models. Members learned exactly how to get better results from the most powerful reasoning models available. We add new workshops like this every week, so you're always learning the latest developments alongside thousands of other forward-thinking professionals. Start your 14-day trial to access last week’s recording and join our next live session here.