Field notes on building AI systems.

Field Notes is Jim Zaslaw’s collection of practical articles on AI for business, covering AI strategy, AI search and AEO, AI operating systems, AI-driven brand production, and how AI is changing websites and e-commerce. The articles are written for owners, CEOs, and marketing leaders who want to put AI to work, not just read about it.

I do. Field Notes articles are written by Jim Zaslaw, CEO of ZINC, drawing on more than 25 years of building brands, websites, e-commerce platforms, and marketing systems, and on current work helping leadership teams make AI decisions.

Start with work that is frequent, time-consuming, pattern-based, and easy to review, such as recurring writing, marketing content, research, and internal knowledge capture. The Field Notes guide “How Can a Small Business Use AI?” explains how to find and prioritize a first AI opportunity.

Define the work first. List the tasks you want AI to improve, then evaluate tools against those tasks and check how each fits your existing stack and data rules. Buying tools before defining the work is how companies end up with scattered subscriptions and no shared system. The Field Notes guide “How Do You Choose the Right AI Tools for Your Business?” covers the evaluation in depth.

Because the results stay individual. Prompts live in personal chat histories, workflows are never documented, and each person uses different tools in different ways, so nothing compounds. Companies get past this by organizing tools, prompts, workflows, and standards into a shared system, which Field Notes covers in “What Is an AI Operating System for Business?”

SEO still matters, but it is being absorbed into a larger discipline that includes AEO, GEO, and AIO. The same fundamentals that help pages rank also help AI engines understand and cite them. The Field Notes article “How does SEO work now that everyone uses AI to search?” explains how they fit together.

Yes, if the brand is defined clearly enough for AI to follow and people review what goes out. The risk comes from generic, unreviewed output that drifts from how the brand looks and sounds. The Field Notes article “How Is AI Affecting Branding?” covers how businesses can protect consistency while using AI to move faster.

Pick a few trusted sources, revisit your AI plan on a regular schedule, and judge new tools against the work you have already defined rather than the hype around them. Field Notes is written for that: practical takes on what is changing and what to do about it. Companies that want a standing senior partner for this use an advisory retainer.

They are starting to. With AI checkout, buyers can complete purchases inside an AI conversation, which makes acquisition easier and exposes weak retention faster. The Field Notes article “AI checkout is here” explains what that means for e-commerce businesses in 2026.

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