I'm Lane Belone. Former Green Beret. Author. Builder. I've been working with AI as a sovereign craft for a few years now. Long enough to watch what it does to people who use it from a clear interior, and what it does to people who use it from the productivity frame the model defaults to.
The ones using it from the productivity frame get fast. The output trail grows. The interior question quietly accumulates as background pressure. By month six, the off-ness has a name. By month twelve, the off-ness is the texture.
The ones using it from a clear interior get fast too. The difference is what they're accelerating. The question they hold. The manifesto they wrote. The mirror they keep honest by honoring its limits. The Aliveness check they run before the prompt window opens.
This Field Guide is that practice. Seven Moves I've installed in my own week. Each one earned through writing my way through the Tuesday-morning interior question and finding the structure that holds on the other side.
Yours, not borrowed.
Seven chapters. Seven Moves. Twenty to forty minutes to read. Two to three weeks to install.
Each chapter names a piece of the practice. Each one ships The Move, an install you can drop into your week before the chapter's even fully landed. The Move is the point. The reading is the on-ramp.
Read in order on the first pass. Install the Moves as you go. The Field Guide is built for two to three weeks of practice plus a quarterly review block.
Chapter 1. The Productive-With-AI-But-Empty Texture.
The Tuesday-morning interior. The output trail that looks impressive from outside and feels off from inside. The Move: a three-minute morning question before the day's first AI session. Whose game does this serve?
Chapter 2. What Game of Life Are You Playing.
The paradigm question productivity AI can't ask because its value proposition assumes you already know. Three layers: the life itself, the voice, the terms. The Move: sit with the question for fifteen minutes. Write the answer that lands after the first one wince.
Chapter 3. Your Three-Paragraph Personal Manifesto.
Best guess. Operationalize. Practice is the audit. Who you're becoming. What you value. Your terms. The quarterly re-read holds you to your own game. The Move: the three-paragraph template plus the AI-facilitated walk-through prompt plus the quarterly calendar block. Copy-paste. Set the recurring block before closing the chapter.
Chapter 4. AI as Mirror Not Engine.
The foundational reframe. AI illuminates patterns inside what you've already shown it. The body knows what hasn't been inputted. The mirror has limits and the limits are honored. The Move: the mirror prompt. A copy-paste custom instruction that frames AI's role as pattern-illuminator with explicit limits. The AI returns you to yourself rather than overrides your knowing.
Chapter 5. Aliveness as Compass.
Following Aliveness or following a conditioned script. Every choice, every prompt, every session passes the filter. The Move: the Aliveness check before any AI session. Thirty seconds. Am I about to do this because I'm alive to it, or because I should? Honest answer routes the next thirty minutes.
Chapter 6. The Contemplative Question Practice.
Surgical precision. Set-it-and-forget-it. Default mode network. Trust the subconscious. The quality of the question reveals the depth of the answer. The Move: craft your own surgical question. Hold it once a day or once every couple days. Surround it loosely with the question's energy. The answer emerges.
Chapter 7. Yours, Not Borrowed. The Quarterly Review.
The arrival. Built for the second pass, the third, the quarterly re-read. The Move: the quarterly review block on your calendar. Manifesto re-read. Aliveness check. Mirror calibration. Contemplative question refresh. One sitting per quarter. The structure holds you for the next ninety days.
The felt difference after the Moves are installed.
Simplicity. Spaciousness. Calm authority. The work feels yours. Decisions that used to bounce around resolve in seconds because the manifesto already answered. You're not performing the productive-with-AI version of yourself. You're being the version that's alive.
Two files. PDF and AI-Ready Markdown. Both designed to live in your week.
The Field Guide as a designed reading experience and as an AI-native working tool.
The Field Guide (PDF)
Full-bleed, designed for screen or print. Seven chapters, seven Moves. The reading experience the cover promises.
The Field Guide (AI-Ready Markdown with Companion Guide)
One markdown file. Drop it into Claude or ChatGPT. The Companion Guide section at the top tells your AI how to facilitate the Moves. The Field Guide content below gives your AI the installed operating context for every conversation about your question, your manifesto and your terms.
Voice-brief block, Moves index, mirror prompt, contemplative question protocol, quarterly review block. Plus the full Field Guide content. End-to-end in one paste.
$9
The full Field Guide. Seven chapters. Seven Moves. Two files designed to install the practice into your week.
Built for the operator who can already use Claude or ChatGPT well enough and is asking a different question than which prompt-pack to buy.
The Move is the point. The reading is the on-ramp.
Common Questions
The Personal Trilogy
Yours to Make — the creation practice. Voice patterning through contrast. AI as collaborator not generator.
Sovereign Capture — the container practice. A quieter mind by design.
If Your Work Has a Business Surface
AI for the Business You Actually Want — the question sharpens differently at the business axis. Same architecture. Different door.