This week’s update is a significant one.
Comms With AI has always been built around a simple idea: give communications professionals practical, structured tools for working with AI — not theory, not vendor hype, but actual frameworks you can use on Monday morning.
The library started with the practical work: templates for planning campaigns, writing messages, governing approvals, monitoring coverage. But something was missing from the architecture. The tools to assess whether your team was actually ready to use any of this, and to build the capability to use it well.
That layer is now live. And it completes the picture.
The Comms With AI Operating System
The Comms With AI OS is a five-phase framework that organises every template, prompt, and workflow into a single coherent model. The five phases form a cycle — each feeds the next, and the output of Phase 5 feeds back into Phase 1.
Here’s how they break down:
Phase 1: Strategise The intelligence and planning layer. Research, audience mapping, stakeholder analysis, competitive positioning, message architecture, channel strategy, objectives design. Everything that should happen before a single word is written or a single piece of content published.
Phase 2: Create The production layer. Where strategy becomes tangible output — written content, editorial plans, multi-format packages, internal communications, community responses, event communications. AI agents accelerate first drafts and multi-format packaging; human review remains essential for voice, nuance, and strategic alignment.
Phase 3: Govern The quality and risk control layer. Approval workflows, tone verification, claims substantiation, accessibility review, brand voice auditing, crisis response preparation. The control layer that protects reputation and ensures everything published meets the required standard.
Phase 4: Monitor The intelligence and detection layer. Everything that happens after content is published: media monitoring, issue tracking, sentiment analysis, competitive intelligence, campaign performance measurement, stakeholder reporting. The outputs feed directly back into Phase 1 — intelligence gathered here improves the strategy you build next time.
Phase 5: Transform The capability and change layer. This is the one we’ve just built out, and it’s the layer that makes the rest of the OS sustainable. It addresses how organisations build, sustain, and evolve their AI-powered communications capability — not just what they produce with AI, but how they produce it, and how good they’re getting at it over time.
What’s new this week
Phase 5: Transform — four new templates
This is an entirely new category on the site, covering the work that makes AI adoption stick.
AI Readiness Assessment — The diagnostic that should precede any serious AI adoption. Evaluates readiness across five dimensions: technology infrastructure, team skills, workflow structure, governance and risk management, and organisational culture. Used at the start of an AI programme and repeated 6–12 months later, it also functions as a benchmark. 50 minutes. Intermediate.
Comms Workflow Audit — AI adoption without workflow clarity is technology bolted onto chaos. This template maps the key recurring workflows in a communications function, identifies where time is consumed and where things go wrong, and pinpoints where AI could add the most value. 60 minutes. Intermediate.
Capability Gap Analysis — Technology adoption without skills development fails. This template maps current capability against what’s needed for effective AI-powered communications work across five areas: AI literacy, prompt design, critical evaluation, workflow integration, and strategic understanding. Output is a prioritised development plan. 45 minutes. Intermediate.
AI Tool Evaluation Framework — The AI tools market for communications professionals has an abundance of vendor hype. This framework gives you a systematic way to assess tools against criteria that actually matter: output quality in your specific use cases, integration with existing tools, data security and compliance, ease of adoption, and total cost against realistic expected value. 45 minutes. Intermediate.
Phase 4: Monitor — four advanced templates
Four new templates completing the monitoring and reporting category, covering the more advanced intelligence disciplines:
Competitive Intelligence Monitor — A repeating discipline for tracking competitor communications activity: what messages they’re pushing, which channels they’re investing in, how their positioning is shifting, and how audiences are responding. Designed to run monthly or quarterly. 35 minutes.
Earned Media Report — A structured monthly analysis of PR and earned media coverage: what ran, where, with what tone and messaging accuracy, and what it signals about your media relations effectiveness. 25 minutes.
Quarterly Comms Review — End-of-quarter review of the whole communications programme — across all channels, campaigns, and activity — that evaluates performance, extracts learning, and sets priorities for the next quarter. 45 minutes.
Sentiment Deep Dive — A framework for going beyond surface-level sentiment scores to understand why sentiment is moving, who is driving it, and what it means for how you communicate. Used when a shift or pattern demands deeper analysis. 40 minutes.
The numbers
62 templates. 8 categories. 5 phases. Every one includes an AI prompt and a human review checklist. Free to use.
Browse the full library at commswith.ai/library, or start with the OS overview at commswith.ai/start-here.
Built by Michael MacLennan. Questions or feedback: michael@faur.site