Rich Carr releases handbook on documenting AI-assisted work

Learning scientist Rich Carr has released a new book aimed at helping workers document and defend work completed with AI. The handbook lands as employers, educators and hiring systems increasingly pressure workers to prove both AI fluency and human judgment.

Why it matters: - AI use at work is creating an authorship gap: workers are being asked to show both that they can use AI well and that they can stand behind the output. - Carr argues the answer is documentation, not AI detection tools or gatekeepers. - The book targets professionals who want a practical way to verify, own and explain AI-assisted work.

What happened: - Learning scientist Rich Carr released Stake Skills: Owning the Work AI Does for You through Brain-centric, LLC. - The handbook is available now on Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats. - An audiobook release is planned later. - Carr will review the book’s production log in a live broadcast on his Substack publication, Brain-centric, on Saturday, September 5 at 9 a.m. Pacific. - Carr will sign the book’s launch-day entry during that broadcast.

The details: - Stake Skills is a 157-page handbook for working professionals. - The book teaches readers to document, verify and take accountability for work produced with artificial intelligence. - Its core practice is a weekly, ten-minute log. - That log records what was produced, what AI drafted, what the author verified or discarded, and which decisions were human. - The book frames “stake skills” as a third category of professional skill alongside hard skills and soft skills. - Carr defines the idea around three meanings of “stake”: what a worker risks, what a worker claims and what a worker vouches for. - The book includes self-assessment tools. - Daria Cupareanu, founder of Amplifiers, wrote the foreword. - Dr Sam Illingworth, author of Slow AI, provided praise for the book. - The book says it was drafted with AI and verified by Carr. - That production account appears in full in Chapter 16. - The production log for the book and Carr’s ongoing published work is public at the book’s production log. - The opening chapter, “A Warning, Instead of a Preface,” is available free at the opening chapter. - The book is priced at $4.99 for Kindle and $9.99 for paperback. - The paperback ISBN is 979-8-9996841-3-4. - The ebook ISBN is 979-8-9996841-4-1. - More information is available at the book’s website. - Carr is the founder of Brain-centric, LLC. - Carr’s Brain-centric Design methodology has been used in training programs for Fortune 100 organizations. - Carr is also the author of SURPRISED and Invisible Influence. - Carr publishes weekly at Brain-centric.

Between the lines: - The book is as much a demonstration of its thesis as a guide to it. - By publishing a production log, Carr is arguing that provenance should be visible and persistent, not guessed at after the fact. - The timing reflects growing anxiety over hidden AI use, hiring screens and workplace verification. - Carr’s message is that a documented process can be more useful than a detection score.

What’s next: - Carr’s live log review could further test the book’s central claim in public. - The planned audiobook release will extend the book’s reach beyond the current Kindle and paperback editions. - The open production log gives readers a continuing example of the documentation method the book promotes.

The bottom line: - Stake Skills turns AI authorship anxiety into a workflow problem: keep records, verify the output and be ready to stand behind the work.