Shipping AI Features That Customers Actually Use (Without the Hype)

<p>Most "AI features" launched in 2024-25 were thin wrappers around ChatGPT. Customers tried them once and never returned. Here is how we ship AI that sticks.</p><h2>1. Solve a workflow, not a wow-moment</h2><p>The best AI features remove a chore (summarize, classify, search, draft) — not impress with a magic trick.</p><h2>2. Build evals before you build prompts</h2><p>Without evals you cannot tell if a prompt change made things better or worse. We use a golden-set + LLM-as-judge approach.</p><h2>3. Fall back gracefully</h2><p>LLMs hallucinate, time out, and cost money. Always have a deterministic fallback.</p>