A System for Thinking Better About AI

Recode how leaders think

AI frameworks, mental models, and weekly intelligence for builders shaping of commerce, technology, and leadership.

By Suman Guha — India Tech Icon and Founder of RecodeAI

Frameworks

Thinking tools for the AI era

Battle-tested frameworks from two decades of building at scale. Each one designed to cut through noise and drive decisions.

FRAMEWORK 01

The Clarity Stack

Most strategies fail not from bad execution — but from unclear thinking at the top. Three questions that separate clarity from confusion: What are we building? Who is it for? Why does it matter?

Strategy Leadership
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FRAMEWORK 02

Channels → Context

Omnichannel is table stakes. The next frontier: context-driven personalization. Right product, right person, right moment — in-store, on phone, or inside a car. The shift from where you sell to why someone buys.

Commerce Personalization
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FRAMEWORK 03

The Post-Search Paradigm

The answer IS the action. The search IS the sale. AI agents don't return results — they return decisions. From browsing to being guided. From ten blue links to one answer that matters.

AI Agents Commerce
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FRAMEWORK 04

Brain vs. Nervous System

The model is the brain. MCP is the nervous system. You can't think without nerves. Stop asking "which model?" — start asking "which system?" The infrastructure around AI matters more than the AI itself.

Architecture Infrastructure
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FRAMEWORK 05

Burn the Blueprint

You can't bolt intelligence onto an old framework and call it reinvention. Putting AI on top of legacy systems is like putting autopilot in a horse cart. First-principles rebuilding, not incremental improvement.

Transformation First Principles
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FRAMEWORK 06

Purpose × Performance

Purpose and performance aren't trade-offs. They compound. Tata gives 62% of profits to nonprofit — and built a $160B ecosystem. Purpose attracts better talent, better decisions, better outcomes.

Leadership Culture
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Mental Models

How to think about what's next

Quick-reference mental models for navigating AI decisions. Each one sharpened by real-world leadership at scale.

01
Signal Over Noise
Leaders don't need more content. They need sharper signals. Not everything trending matters.
→ 02
Clarity Is Kindness
Both to yourself and to those you lead. Clarity compounds. Confusion compounds too. Choose clarity.
→ 03
Tools → Agents → Teammates
AI evolution in three phases. We're in the middle one. Most companies are still in phase one.
→ 04
AI as Leadership Shift
AI is not a technology upgrade — it's a leadership upgrade. The bottleneck was never the model. It's the leader.
→ 05
Index vs. Ally
We don't want an index. We want an ally. The shift from information retrieval to intelligent assistance.
→ 06
Emerging Market Mirrors
LATAM and Asia share more patterns than people think. Tech adoption cycles shrink from decades to months.
→
Memos

Weekly intelligence for leaders

Each MEMO cuts through the noise and delivers one thesis, backed by evidence, in under 5 minutes.

MEMO #04 — LATEST
February 22, 2026

The Week AI Came Home to India

India hosted the world's most important AI summit. OpenAI raised $100B at $850B valuation. Commerce rewired around agents. And Altman and Amodei refused to hold hands.

Read memo →
MEMO #03 — LATEST
February 16, 2026

The Week AI Grew a Nervous System

MCP became the universal standard. Three frontier models dropped. $650B in infrastructure spending committed. The model race is over. The system race just started.

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MEMO #01
May 17, 2025

It's Not Search If I Have to Search

The fall of the blue box and the rise of the age of AI agents.

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ISSUE #00 — MANIFESTO
May 4, 2025

Why I Started recodeai

Most leaders are drowning in AI noise. This is the signal.

Read memo →
AI Firehose

What's happening right now

Real-time AI intelligence through a commerce and leadership lens.
LAST UPDATED: FEB 23, 2026 — 04:54 IST

Why creators are ditching ad revenue for chocolate bars and fintech acquisitions Microsoft’s new gaming CEO vows not to flood the ecosystem with ‘endless AI slop The creator economy’s ad revenue problem and India’s AI ambitions The AI security nightmare is here and it looks suspiciously like lobster OpenAI sidesteps Nvidia with unusually fast coding model on plate-sized chips 6 days left to lock in the lowest TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 rates 7 days until ticket prices rise for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Anthropic-funded group backs candidate attacked by rival AI super PAC Samsung is adding Perplexity to Galaxy AI Amazon blames human employees for an AI coding agent’s mistake Why creators are ditching ad revenue for chocolate bars and fintech acquisitions Microsoft’s new gaming CEO vows not to flood the ecosystem with ‘endless AI slop The creator economy’s ad revenue problem and India’s AI ambitions The AI security nightmare is here and it looks suspiciously like lobster OpenAI sidesteps Nvidia with unusually fast coding model on plate-sized chips 6 days left to lock in the lowest TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 rates 7 days until ticket prices rise for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Anthropic-funded group backs candidate attacked by rival AI super PAC Samsung is adding Perplexity to Galaxy AI Amazon blames human employees for an AI coding agent’s mistake
🔴 Breaking

AI Impact Summit 2026

A look at the partnerships and investments Google announced at the AI Impact Summit 2026.

🔴 Breaking

Apple’s Next Big Thing Is a Push Into Visual Artificial Inte

Apple CEO Tim Cook is signaling that Visual Intelligence will be the defining feature of the company’s push into wearable AI devices. Also: What to expect from Apple’s first product launches of the year during the week of March 2; the iPhone 18 Pro’s

🔴 Breaking

OpenAI’s first ChatGPT gadget could be a smart speaker

OpenAI's first hardware release will be a smart speaker with a camera that will probably cost between $200 and $300, according to The Information. The device will be able to recognize things like "items on a nearby table or conversations people are h

🟡 Notable

AI Impact Summit 2026: How we’re partnering to make AI work

four people seated on a conference stage

🟡 Notable

The AI security nightmare is here and it looks suspiciously

A hacker tricked a popular AI coding tool into installing OpenClaw - the viral, open-source AI agent OpenClaw that "actually does things" - absolutely everywhere. Funny as a stunt, but a sign of what to come as more and more people let autonomous sof

🟡 Notable

OpenAI sidesteps Nvidia with unusually fast coding model on

OpenAI's new GPT‑5.3‑Codex‑Spark is 15 times faster at coding than its predecessor.

🟢 Interesting

Why creators are ditching ad revenue for chocolate bars and

The creator economy is evolving fast, and ad revenue alone isn’t cutting it anymore. YouTubers are launching product lines, acquiring startups, and building actual business empires. In fact, MrBeast’s company bought fintech startup Step,

🟢 Interesting

Microsoft’s new gaming CEO vows not to flood the ecosystem w

Is Microsoft's gaming division doubling down on AI?

🟢 Interesting

The creator economy’s ad revenue problem and India’s AI ambi

The creator economy is evolving fast, and ad revenue alone isn’t cutting it anymore. YouTubers are launching product lines, acquiring startups, and building actual business empires. In fact, MrBeast&

Free AI Courses

Learn AI from the world's best — for free

Curated courses from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Google, DeepLearning.AI, and more. No cost. No excuses. Prompting is now a core leadership skill.

DL
DeepLearning.AI (Andrew Ng)
7 Courses
DLAI 01 — START HERE
ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Devs

The non-negotiable starting point. System prompts, few-shot, chain-of-thought. Co-taught with OpenAI. 90 minutes.

FreeEssential
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DLAI 02
LangChain for LLM App Development

Build with the most popular LLM framework. Chains, memory, agents, tools. Taught by Harrison Chase.

FreeAgents
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DLAI 03
Building Systems with the ChatGPT API

Beyond single prompts: classification, routing, processing, evaluation. How production AI works.

FreeSystems
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DLAI 04
Building RAG Agents with LLMs

RAG end-to-end: document chunking, embeddings, retrieval, augmented generation. Built with NVIDIA.

FreeRAG
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DLAI 05
Generative AI for Everyone

Andrew Ng's non-technical GenAI course. How it works, what it can/can't do, and its impact on business.

Free to AuditLeadership
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DLAI 06
AI for Everyone

The executive primer. AI concepts, project workflows, ethical considerations. 6 hours. Non-technical.

Free to AuditExecutive
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DLAI 07 — NEW
Build with Andrew (Vibe Coding)

Never coded before? Build a working web app in 30 minutes using AI. The most beginner-friendly course.

FreeNo-Code
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S
Stanford University
6 Courses
STANFORD 01
Machine Learning Specialization

Andrew Ng's legendary ML course. Regression, neural networks, recommender systems. The gold standard.

Free to AuditFoundational
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STANFORD 02
CS229: Machine Learning

The full Stanford ML course. Supervised learning, deep learning, and generalization. Graduate-level.

FreeAdvanced
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STANFORD 03
CS224N: NLP with Deep Learning

How language models work — from word vectors to transformers to GPT. The architecture behind LLMs.

FreeNLP
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STANFORD 04
CS221: AI Principles & Techniques

Search, logic, machine learning, and deep learning — the full AI foundation from Stanford.

FreeFoundational
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STANFORD 05
CS231N: Deep Learning for Computer Vision

CNNs, image recognition, generative models. How machines see and understand the visual world.

FreeVision
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STANFORD 06
The AI Awakening: Economy & Society

AI's impact on jobs, economics, and society. Strategic perspective for leaders, not engineers.

Free to AuditLeadership
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M
MIT
5 Courses
MIT 01
6.S191: Introduction to Deep Learning

MIT's most popular AI course. LLMs, generative AI, reinforcement learning. Updated annually with cutting-edge content.

FreeDeep Learning
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MIT 02
6.034: Artificial Intelligence

MIT's foundational AI course via OpenCourseWare. Search, reasoning, machine learning, and neural networks.

FreeFoundational
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MIT 03
6.036: Introduction to Machine Learning

Classifiers, neural networks, reinforcement learning, and generalization. MIT's practical ML course.

FreeML
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MIT 04
18.065: Matrix Methods for ML

Gilbert Strang's legendary linear algebra course — the math backbone of every AI system.

FreeMathematics
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MIT 05
Introduction to Probability

Probabilistic thinking is the foundation of AI inference. Master Bayesian reasoning and statistics.

FreeMathematics
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G
Google
6 Courses
GOOGLE 01
Google AI Essentials

Under 10 hours. Prompting, responsible AI, practical use cases. The best starting point for non-technical leaders.

Free TrialBeginner
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GOOGLE 02
Introduction to Generative AI

Google Cloud's 45-minute microlearning course. What GenAI is, how LLMs work, and Google's AI tools.

Free + BadgeGenAI
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GOOGLE 03
Introduction to Large Language Models

How LLMs work behind the scenes. Architecture, training, fine-tuning, and prompt design.

Free + BadgeLLMs
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GOOGLE 04
Introduction to Responsible AI

Google's seven AI principles. Bias, fairness, transparency. Essential for any AI-powered organization.

Free + BadgeEthics
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GOOGLE 05
5-Day Gen AI Intensive (Kaggle)

Google's hands-on crash course. Embeddings, classifiers, agents, MLOps. Build real projects daily.

FreeHands-On
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GOOGLE 06
Google Prompting Essentials

Master prompt crafting in 5 steps. Boost productivity with Gemini, NotebookLM, and Google Workspace.

Free TrialPrompting
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+
OpenAI, Microsoft, NVIDIA & More
6 Courses
MICROSOFT 01
AI Fundamentals (Microsoft Learn)

Core AI principles, neural networks, and how AI is integrated into Microsoft 365 and Azure. Free certification prep.

FreeFundamentals
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MICROSOFT 02
Introduction to Generative AI

LLM concepts, practical applications, responsible AI, and Copilot. Free modules on Microsoft Learn.

FreeGenAI
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NVIDIA 01
NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute

Generative AI, LLMs, deep learning, and graph neural networks. Free self-paced modules for developers.

Free ModulesTechnical
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IBM 01
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (IBM)

13-hour comprehensive course. ML, deep learning, neural networks, and hands-on projects.

Free to AuditComprehensive
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HELSINKI 01
Elements of AI (University of Helsinki)

The most popular free AI course in the world. 750K+ students. Philosophy, methods, and implications of AI.

Free + CertBeginner
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DLAI — SPECIALIZATION
Deep Learning Specialization

Andrew Ng's 5-course deep learning journey. Neural networks, CNNs, RNNs, transformers. The definitive path.

Free to AuditDeep Learning
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About

The human behind the signal

Suman Guha
India Tech Icon and Founder of RecodeAI
Dual Role at Tata Digital / CPTO at Tata CLiQ

Previously
CTO, Tata Cliq
CPTO, Reliance Retail
CPO, Jio Platform
Tesco, Red Hat, Cisco, Teradata

Recognition
Stanford LEAD
Fellow, BCS (UK)
ET AI Top 50, Forbes
Best-selling Author

Scale
180M+ users
$10B portfolio
$160B group ecosystem
100+ countries

Connect
LinkedIn
X / Twitter
Newsletter
Clarity is kindness — both to yourself and to those you lead.

I've spent two decades building at the intersection of technology and commerce — from a startup in Finland to leading digital transformation for some of India's largest platforms.

What I've learned: the hard part is never the technology. It's the clarity. Clarity about what you're building, who you're building it for, and why it matters.

recodeai exists because most leaders are drowning in AI noise. New tools launch daily. Bold claims. Empty buzzwords. Too much content. Not enough clarity.

This is the signal. Frameworks that cut through noise. Mental models that drive decisions. Weekly intelligence that respects your time.

Free for 100,000 leaders.

Choose to be wise.

Free for 100,000 Leaders

Think better. Decide faster.
Lead wisely.

Weekly AI intelligence in under 5 minutes. Frameworks. Mental models. Signal, not noise.

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