The Missing Manual Show

When life moves fast and nothing goes according to plan, most people don't need another framework. They need a map for the moment the frameworks don't cover. That's what this episode of The Missing Manual is. Julia Levy and Jenny Cotie Kangas (JCK) are bringing you into a real week.  Julia traveled to Florida for a short trip to help a parent through knee surgery and ended up staying through an IC...

What happens when you build something useful in AI and then life gets in the way for two weeks? Most people lose everything they built and start over. In this episode of The Missing Manual, Julia Levy and Jenny Cotie Kangas show you how to pick back up without losing momentum — using their own podcast production system as the case study. Julia and Jenny walk through re-grounding their Claude proje...

Welcome back to The Missing Manual with your hosts, Julia Levy and Jenny Cotie Kangas (JCK). In this episode, we are right in the middle of a multi-part series detailing the real, unvarnished work it takes to build a content engine and operationalize AI for daily work. Too often, people get frustrated with AI because they expect it to read their minds. Today, we demonstrate a core truth: you canno...

Documenting the Mess Before You Automate "Automating a broken process just breaks things faster."  In this episode of The Missing Manual, JCK and Julia take you behind the scenes of their own operational chaos. This is part 3 of our ongoing series on operationalizing AI for a specific, real-world use case: running this exact podcast. Julia does a complete verbal download of the current, highly man...

Two Brand Voices, One Show: How We Train AI to Speak for Both of Us When two distinct creators collaborate, how do you ensure the content speaks with a unified voice—without losing the hard-earned, earned beliefs of either host? In this episode of The Missing Manual, Julia Levy and Jenny Cotie Kangas dive deep into the mechanics of operationalizing their show using AI. This isn't about quick hacks...

In this episode of The Missing Manual, Julia Levy and Jenny Cotie Kangas teach you how to build an AI workflow for any repetitive task by working through a real example in real time. They use their own podcast production process as the case study, but the framework they walk through applies to almost anything clunky and manual that drains hours from your week. The three moves are simple: follow th...

"Hope is not a strategy." If your desktop is a sea of icons and your Downloads folder is a graveyard of unnamed PDFs, this episode is for you. Julia and JCK dive into a practical, day-to-day use case for AI that goes beyond the hype: digital organization. In this episode, we document the process of turning digital chaos into a streamlined system. We discuss the shift from "manual" organization to...

In this episode of The Missing Manual, JCK and Julia Levy go "under the hood" of their own AI experiments to discuss what happens when the tech fails to meet your standards. From Julia’s frustrating experience cloning her voice to JCK’s "agentic design" approach, they break down why AI is a "one-size-fits-one" solution. They explore the "Step Zero" of process mapping, the power of handoff document...

Tired of your AI losing the plot mid-conversation? Learn why Agentic AI requires Handoff Documents to prevent hallucinations and maximize your token usage in Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. As we move further into the era of Agentic AI, the biggest hurdle isn't the AI's capability, it's its memory. In this episode of The Missing Manual, Julia Levy and JCK (Jenny Cotie Kangas) break down the "handoff"...

In Part 2 of our Agentic AI series, we get tactical. Julia and JCK discuss the Brand Voice Artifact—a project designed to ensure AI never misses your tone, style, or specific "guardrails" again. We explore how Julia used her book, transcripts, and frameworks to create a custom "Gem" in Gemini that acts as her professional voice clone, and how JCK uses "Usage Guardrails" to push back on the AI when...

Are you just putting AI on top of a broken process? In the premiere of our 3-part Agentic AI series, Julia and JCK pull back the curtain on Agentic AI—the move from "generative" (creating text) to "agentic" (taking action). JCK shares her journey from a Johns Hopkins AI program to building "Action-Engineered" agents, while Julia discusses how to balance innovation with enterprise risk and PII conc...

The Resume Infrastructure is Cracking. Can Talent Ops Save It? We all know the secret: the resume was never a perfect tool, but now it’s becoming a liability. From candidates using AI to "game" the ATS to the struggle of identifying true potential in a sea of rear-facing data, the "Builder" community in HR is facing a systemic crisis. In this episode of The Missing Manual, Julia Levy and Jenny Cot...

The conversation introduces the 'Hell Yes' mantra and explores its application in decision-making, reframing negative experiences, and identifying content gaps. It emphasizes the subjectivity of 'good' and the journey of starting something new. Takeaways 'Hell Yes' mantra for decision-making Reframing 'Hell No' to 'Hell Yes' Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Mantra 05:11 Identifying Content Gap

The $0 Strategy: How to execute when the "Tools" don't exist. "Fix it, but don't spend anything." It’s the most common directive in the corporate machine, yet the one least documented in the training manuals. In this session of The Missing Manual, Jenny Cotie Kangas and Julia Levy deconstruct the mechanics of building in an under-resourced vacuum. This isn't about "visionary leadership"; it’s abou...

The conversation delves into the concept of friction in talent acquisition processes, exploring the distinction between good and bad friction. It also highlights the impact of automating bad processes and introduces 'The Friction Project' as a resource for understanding and addressing friction in organizational processes. Takeaways Friction in talent acquisition Understanding and addressing fricti...

Doing the work is only half the battle. Knowing how to navigate the machine is the rest. In this session of The Missing Manual, Jenny Cotie Kangas and Julia Levy deconstruct why Design Thinking is a critical piece of operational tradecraft, not just a buzzword for the innovation lab. What Jenny and Julia cover: The "Work" of Empathy: Why understanding the human on the other side of a process is a...

Ever feel like there’s a secret playbook for corporate success that everyone else received but you? In this debut episode, Julia Levy and Jenny Cotie Kangas (JCK) pull back the curtain on why they launched The Missing Manual. They’re ditching the scripts and fluff to bridge the massive gap between "getting the job" and "doing the work." If you’re a builder, a practitioner, or a doer tired of "easy...