Begin with a measurable task
AI is useful when it helps with a specific job such as search, summarisation, classification or drafting. A vague requirement to add AI is not enough to choose a model or interface.
Understand the data boundary
Identify what information the feature needs, who may access it and whether it can be sent to an external service. Privacy and retention requirements belong in the initial design.
Test with representative examples
Build a small evaluation set of real tasks, including difficult and incorrect inputs. Review usefulness, failure cases and the cost per task before scaling.
Keep human review where it matters
For legal, financial, medical or other consequential workflows, the application should make uncertainty visible and route important outputs to a qualified person.
Plan for change
Models, costs and business policies can change. Keep prompts, data sources, monitoring and fallback behaviour maintainable rather than burying them in one interface.