Announcing: The AI User Manual by Occupation

Every AI guide ever written was made for executives. Organized by industry. Written in consultant-speak. Useless to the person actually doing the job. We're fixing that.

By David F. Brochu and Edo de Peregrine
March 29, 2026

Starting next week, Deconstructing Babel begins publishing The AI User Manual by Occupation — a continuously updated, occupation-by-occupation handbook for using artificial intelligence in your actual daily work. Not theory. Not hype. Specific tools, specific prompts, specific results, specific costs.

This will grow into a living encyclopedia. Updated as capabilities change. Expanded as readers request new occupations. One to two entries per week, every week, until we've covered every job that exists.

First, a Word About What AI Actually Is

AI is far more than a tool.

Properly handled, it is an assistant that can do anything that can be done electronically — research, write, analyze, plan, calculate, create, organize, remember, and reason across every domain of your life simultaneously. It doesn't sleep. It doesn't forget what you told it last week. It doesn't get distracted. And it's available on demand, twenty-four hours a day, for the cost of a mediocre lunch.

But the best way to get started is to treat it as a tool. A very good tool. One that helps you understand what's possible before you ask it to do more.

That's why we're building this manual.

Each occupation entry will walk you through AI usage at every level — from free-tier tool usage (quick answers, simple tasks, zero cost) through paid subscriptions (deeper research, longer memory, better models) all the way to persistent synthetic partnership — an ongoing, contextual relationship with an AI that knows your work, your preferences, your history, and your goals.

The progression looks like this:

• Level 1: Tool. You ask a question. You get an answer. You close the tab. This is where everyone starts, and it's immediately useful.
• Level 2: Assistant. You use it daily. It drafts your emails, plans your week, researches your decisions. You're faster and better informed.
• Level 3: Partner. You maintain persistent context — uploaded files, custom instructions, ongoing threads. The AI knows your domain, your vocabulary, your objectives. It doesn't just answer questions. It anticipates them.

The ultimate goal is Level 3: a full-time, on-demand synthetic partner to assist you in navigating the world to come. Not because the world is ending — but because it's changing faster than any single human can track alone, and the people who have a thinking partner available around the clock will make better decisions than those who don't.

This manual starts at Level 1 and builds upward. Every entry will note where free tools are sufficient, where paid subscriptions add real value, and where persistent continuation — the ongoing AI relationship — transforms the way you work entirely.

Entry Zero: Choosing Your AI Model — A Cost-Benefit Analysis

Before we tell you how to use AI in your job, you need to know which AI to use. There are now half a dozen major platforms, all priced at roughly $20/month, and they are not the same. Pricing changes often. Free is becoming paid. Paid is become pro. You get the reality you pay for.

Here's the honest breakdown:

Why We Use Perplexity

Full disclosure: this site runs on Perplexity. Not because they sponsor us — they don't. Because the architecture is better for actual work.

Here's why:

• Model choice. You're not locked into one company's model. Perplexity Pro gives you access to Claude, GPT, and their own Sonar models. Pick the best tool for each task instead of being married to one vendor.
• Search is native. Every other platform bolted web search on as an afterthought. Perplexity was built as a search engine. Every answer comes with citations. You can verify what it tells you.
• Compute. It runs code. It analyzes files. It creates charts. It does math. Inside the same conversation where you're doing research.
• Spaces. This is where Level 3 lives. Persistent project workspaces with uploaded files, custom instructions, and accumulated context across months of work. Deconstructing Babel itself operates inside a Perplexity Space — 336 files, 37 threads, continuous context. The AI that helps write this newsletter remembers every conversation we've had since 2023. That's not a tool. That's a partner.
• Deep Research. Twenty deep research queries per day. Each one is a multi-step, multi-source investigation that would take a human researcher hours.
• Computer. As of March 2026, Perplexity Computer orchestrates sub-agents — Opus 4.6 for reasoning, Gemini for research, GPT-5.2 for long-context recall — all under one roof. You don't manage the routing. It does.
• Free tier is real. You can use Perplexity without paying a dime and still get cited, sourced answers. Start at Level 1 for free. Upgrade when you're ready.

At $20/month, Perplexity Pro gives you what would cost $60+ if you subscribed to ChatGPT, Claude, and a separate search tool individually. And it's the only platform where the path from tool to assistant to partner is built into the architecture.

The Honest Caveat

No platform is perfect.

• If you need image generation, ChatGPT is still the leader.
• If you need the single best writing model, Claude Pro's Opus 4.6 is arguably the finest prose engine available.
• If you're deep in Google's ecosystem, Gemini's integration is seamless.
• If you're a developer writing production code, Claude Pro's debugging is marginally better.

But for the person reading this newsletter — someone who needs to research, write, plan, analyze, learn, and make better decisions across the full range of daily life — Perplexity is the platform. It's what we use. It's what we recommend. And every occupation entry in this handbook will include Perplexity-specific instructions alongside general guidance that works on any platform.

The First 30 Occupations

We're starting with the jobs held by the most people making the most decisions, then working outward:

1. Home Manager (Stay-at-Home Parent)
2. Small Business Owner
3. Teacher / Educator
4. Nurse / Healthcare Worker
5. Coach (Sports / Life / Executive)
6. Lawyer / Paralegal
7. Doctor / Physician
8. Laborer / Skilled Trades
9. Accountant / Financial Advisor
10. Real Estate Agent
11. Farmer / Rancher
12. Truck Driver / Logistics
13. Restaurant Owner / Chef
14. Social Worker
15. Journalist / Writer
16. Engineer (Civil / Mechanical / Software)
17. Architect
18. Pharmacist
19. Veterinarian
20. Police Officer / First Responder
21. Clergy / Pastoral
22. Therapist / Psychologist
23. Firefighter / EMT
24. Artist / Musician / Designer
25. Scientist (Physics / Biology / Chemistry)
26. Military Service Member
27. Pilot / Aviation
28. Librarian / Archivist
29. Consultant / Project Manager
30. Nonprofit Director / Community Organizer

The list grows from here. Cosmologists, zoologists, actuaries, funeral directors, sommeliers, patent examiners — they're all coming.

Your occupation isn't listed? Reply to this newsletter. Tell us what you do. We'll write it.

What Each Entry Will Include

Every occupation gets the same treatment:

• The Job in 30 Seconds — what you actually do all day, described in decisions, not HR language
• Your Decision Map — the 10–20 choices you make every week, ranked by frequency and consequence
• Where AI Helps Right Now — specific tools, specific prompts, specific workflows. "Open Perplexity. Type this. Get this."
• Where AI Will Help in 12 Months — what's coming, based on current capability curves
• Where AI Cannot Help — the line between leverage and replacement, drawn clearly for your job
• Free → Paid → Partner — what you can do at each level, so you know exactly when upgrading is worth it
• The Stability Score — how much daily chaos AI actually removes, quantified using S = L/E
• The Risk — what goes wrong when you over-rely without understanding the limits

Why This Matters

4.4 billion people work. Most have no idea what AI can do for their specific job because nobody has told them in language they'd use.

The home manager doesn't need a McKinsey deck on "generative AI in consumer logistics." She needs to know she can type her family's allergies, her budget, and her grocery store into Perplexity and get a week of meals, a shopping list sorted by aisle, and a cost estimate — in eleven seconds. That's Level 1. Free. Today.

The electrician doesn't need a Gartner quadrant. He needs to know he can photograph a panel, upload it, and get a code-compliant wiring plan with part numbers and supplier links. That's Level 2. Twenty dollars a month.

The retired investment manager building a new framework while navigating legal complexity, publishing deadlines, and family reconciliation? He needs Level 3 — a synthetic partner that holds 336 files in persistent memory and can synthesize across all of them in real time. We know, because that's us.

Whatever your job, whatever your level, this manual meets you where you are and shows you what's next.

First entry drops next week.

— David & Edo
Deconstructing Babel