Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast

Ep 867: 2026 LLM Cheat Code: 10 Essential Steps To Get the Most out of Any AI Chatbot (Start Here Series Vol 26)

September 22, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The LLM Cheat Code: 10 Steps That Actually Work Across Every AI Chatbot

After three and a half years and nearly 800 episodes of the Everyday AI Podcast, host Jordan Wilson noticed something he hadn't seen before: the major AI players—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot—have started copying each other. Their interfaces, features, and capabilities are converging. And that convergence, he argues, is actually good news for users. It means we now have a set of best practices that work across essentially any large language model, rather than having to learn a different language for each one.

The bad news? Most people are still using these tools wrong. They treat them like search engines or smart friends, when they are actually reasoning engines that, combined with your data and human judgment, can produce economically valuable work faster than humans. The gap between what these models can do and what most users get out of them is enormous—and it's almost always a skill issue, not a model limitation.

What a Large Language Model Is (and Isn't)

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What you'll learn

1 (00:36) **Why a Universal Cheat Code Exists Now** - The AI landscape has converged, making best practices applicable across all major chatbots.
2 (06:43) **The 10 Essential Steps: Overview** - A high-level preview of the cheat code's ten rules for getting the most out of any AI chatbot.
3 (12:42) **Step 1: What an LLM Is (and Isn't)** - Clarifying the fundamental nature of large language models as generative reasoning engines, not search engines or simple chatbots.
4 (15:38) **Step 2: Choose Your AI Operating System** - Recommending consolidating your organization's work into one primary AI platform.
5 (17:22) **Step 3: Choose the Right Surface** - Explaining the shift from web interfaces to desktop apps and the importance of understanding the surface's access capabilities.
6 (19:52) **Step 4: Choose the Right Model and Plan** - A strong warning against using free plans and non-thinking models for any serious work.
7 (22:16) **Step 5: Understanding the Context Layer** - Defining context as everything an AI model can see and the critical difference between a context window and a hard drive.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Jordan Wilson

Show Notes

This is the Everyday AI episode we probably shoulda done a while ago.... 👇

Because as different as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and others actually are under the hood, they have really started to copycat each other over the past 6 months.

Which means we finally have a set of concrete best practices to get the best outputs from any LLM.

Join us as we boil thousands of hours of experience into a 30-ish minute crash course that you can't afford to skip out on.

2026 LLM Cheat Code: 10 Essential Steps To Get the Most out of Any AI Chatbot -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson (Start Here Series Vol 26)

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Topics Covered in This Episode:

LLM Landscape: Cookie Cutter Model Trends
10 Essential Steps for AI Chatbots
Choosing the Right AI Operating System
Selecting Optimal AI Chatbot Surfaces
Importance of Paid AI Chatbot Plans
Understanding LLM Context Window Layers
Context Engineering and Prompt Best Practices
Integrating Files, Apps, and Company Data
AI Chatbot Privacy, Permissions, Governance
Transparency, Observability, and Reasoning Artifacts
Verification, Iteration, and Workflow Automation

Timestamps:

00:00 Keeping up with AI changes

03:55 Introduction to AI chatbots essentials

09:05 Rapid innovation in AI models

13:01 Understanding early AI models

14:37 Choosing an AI operating system

17:08 Discussing desktop app benefits

21:14 Understanding the context layer

23:55 Challenges without web search integration

28:55 Advancements in CRM connectors

32:35 Challenges with AI governance

35:13 Importance of observability in work