https://levystreet.com/AI engineering, research and practical lessons from Levy Street, Wellington.en-nzMon, 19 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000https://levystreet.com/tools/zapier/https://levystreet.com/tools/zapier/Zapier AI for New Zealand businesses: USD plan prices, how AI steps and MCP calls use tasks, where data is stored, and a Xero reminder Zap to build this week.https://levystreet.com/tools/notebooklm/https://levystreet.com/tools/notebooklm/NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook. A guide for NZ businesses: plans and source limits, Workspace data handling, and a staff policy notebook to build.https://levystreet.com/tools/n8n/https://levystreet.com/tools/n8n/n8n automation for New Zealand businesses: euro pricing per execution, self-hosting in an NZ region, licence rules, Xero setup and a starter AI workflow.https://levystreet.com/tools/microsoft-copilot/https://levystreet.com/tools/microsoft-copilot/Microsoft 365 Copilot, now Microsoft Copilot, for NZ businesses: NZ$ prices excluding GST, free Copilot Chat versus a licence, data location and a pilot plan.https://levystreet.com/tools/make/https://levystreet.com/tools/make/Make automation for New Zealand businesses: how credit billing works, plan prices, AI modules, data zones, and a ServiceM8 enquiry scenario to build.https://levystreet.com/tools/google-ai-studio/https://levystreet.com/tools/google-ai-studio/Google AI Studio for New Zealand teams: what the free tier does with your prompts, Gemini API prices in USD, NZ data notes and a hands-on extraction project.https://levystreet.com/tools/gemini/https://levystreet.com/tools/gemini/Gemini for business in New Zealand: which Google Workspace plans include it, NZ$ prices, how Google handles your data, and a Sheets starter project.https://levystreet.com/tools/cursor/https://levystreet.com/tools/cursor/Cursor AI for New Zealand teams after the SpaceX deal: the new USD plans, Privacy Mode and data use, buying it from NZ, and a starter project to try.https://levystreet.com/tools/copilot-studio/https://levystreet.com/tools/copilot-studio/Copilot Studio for NZ organisations: what Microsoft Copilot includes, Copilot Credit pricing with a worked example, where data sits and a first agent.https://levystreet.com/tools/claude/https://levystreet.com/tools/claude/Claude for business in New Zealand: Pro, Team and Enterprise prices as shown from NZ, data and training settings, the Xero connector and a starter project.https://levystreet.com/tools/claude-code/https://levystreet.com/tools/claude-code/Claude Code for New Zealand teams: what Anthropic’s coding agent does well, plan prices as shown from NZ, how your code is handled, and a starter project.https://levystreet.com/tools/chatgpt/https://levystreet.com/tools/chatgpt/ChatGPT for business in New Zealand: NZ$ plan prices, Business versus Plus, data and Privacy Act settings, and a starter project to run this week.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-workflow-mapping-template/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-workflow-mapping-template/Free workflow mapping template for AI projects: record each step, owner, system, time and exception, then mark every step automate, assist, human or remove.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-vendor-evaluation-checklist/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-vendor-evaluation-checklist/AI vendor evaluation checklist for NZ buyers: 32 checks in seven groups, knock-out rules and a weighted scoring sheet for comparing shortlisted AI tools.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-use-policy-template-for-nz-smbs/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-use-policy-template-for-nz-smbs/Free AI use policy template for New Zealand small businesses, written for the Privacy Act 2020 and its 14 privacy principles, including IPP 3A. Edit, adopt.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-training-needs-assessment/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-training-needs-assessment/Free AI training needs analysis template: six skill areas, a 0 to 3 proficiency scale, role targets and a gap score that ranks training priorities for teams.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-tools-pricing-nz/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-tools-pricing-nz/AI tools pricing for NZ businesses as listed on 19 October 2026: ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Copilot Studio, n8n, Make, Zapier and API prices.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-roi-calculator/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-roi-calculator/AI ROI calculator in NZ dollars: estimate hours saved, net monthly benefit, payback period and first-year return for an AI project, with a worked example.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-roadmap-template/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-roadmap-template/AI roadmap template for New Zealand businesses: goals, a prioritisation score, three horizons over 12 months, gate measures and a quarterly review agenda.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-risk-register-template/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-risk-register-template/AI risk register template mapped to NIST AI RMF, the OWASP 2026 LLM Top 10 and ISO/IEC 42001, with scoring scales and 12 starter risks for NZ organisations.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-readiness-checklist/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-readiness-checklist/A free AI readiness checklist for New Zealand businesses: 30 yes-or-no checks across workflow, data, privacy, people, tools and budget, with scoring rules.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-quality-review-checklist/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-quality-review-checklist/Free AI quality review checklist: 24 checks in six groups, three review levels matched to risk, a sampling rule and a defect log for NZ businesses.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-prompt-library-template/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-prompt-library-template/Free AI prompt library template for teams: 12 fields per prompt, an index, five starter prompts for NZ businesses and rules that keep the library current.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-project-brief-template/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-project-brief-template/Free AI project brief template: 14 numbered fields that tell a builder or vendor what an AI system must do, with a completed New Zealand example.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-procurement-questions/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-procurement-questions/AI procurement checklist for New Zealand buyers: 30 questions to put to AI suppliers in writing, what good answers look like, contract clauses, red flags.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-pilot-scorecard/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-pilot-scorecard/Free AI pilot scorecard: eight weighted criteria scored 0 to 4, hard gates and a decision rule to scale, fix or stop an AI trial, with a retail example.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-learning-plan-for-teams/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-learning-plan-for-teams/Free 12-week AI learning plan for teams: four stages, about two hours per person a week, practice on real work, free lessons and an individual plan card.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-incident-log-template/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-incident-log-template/Free AI incident log template: 16 fields, a four-level severity scale, near misses and the New Zealand privacy breach notification test for AI incidents.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-data-inventory-template/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-data-inventory-template/Free AI data inventory template for NZ organisations: 15 columns, a sensitivity scale and the Privacy Act 2020 questions, including IPP 3A and offshore use.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-cost-calculator/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-cost-calculator/AI cost calculator for NZ businesses: estimate LLM API running costs in NZD for 11 OpenAI, Anthropic and Google models, with caching, batch and exchange rate.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-business-case-template/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-business-case-template/Free AI business case template for New Zealand businesses: ten sections, costs and benefits in NZD, a stop rule and a worked example with the arithmetic.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-agent-acceptance-checklist/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-agent-acceptance-checklist/AI agent testing checklist: 36 acceptance checks in eight groups, mapped to the OWASP 2026 agentic Top 10 and NCSC guidance, with sign-off rules.https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-adoption-survey/https://levystreet.com/resources/ai-adoption-survey/Free AI adoption survey for staff: 18 questions with fixed response scales on use, time saved, safe use, confidence and barriers, plus scoring rules.https://levystreet.com/research/temporal-probability-calibration/https://levystreet.com/research/temporal-probability-calibration/Temporal probability calibration keeps model probabilities honest while a sequence unfolds. The 2020 Sportsflare AI preprint, its method and who cites it.https://levystreet.com/research/open-source/https://levystreet.com/research/open-source/Public code from the Levy Street team: World of ClaudeCraft, SPAWN D, Tiny Shakespeare CLM and TorchWindow, with licence, status and what each is for.https://levystreet.com/research/lucentbench/https://levystreet.com/research/lucentbench/LucentBench tests whether AI models can forecast next-quarter earnings from a 10-Q, across 100 NASDAQ and NYSE stocks. Method, published results and limits.https://levystreet.com/research/code-policy-models/https://levystreet.com/research/code-policy-models/Code Policy Models improve a policy written as readable code: an LLM proposes edits and only those that score better are kept. Method, evidence and limits.https://levystreet.com/research/code-language-models/https://levystreet.com/research/code-language-models/Tiny Shakespeare CLM is a language model with no neural network, written as Python and improved by a Claude agent over 463 commits. Results, method, limits.https://levystreet.com/research/building-games-with-ai/https://levystreet.com/research/building-games-with-ai/Lessons from building World of ClaudeCraft and Pokémon Claude Red with AI coding models, for any business using AI coding agents on real software.https://levystreet.com/research/ai-in-new-zealand/https://levystreet.com/research/ai-in-new-zealand/Artificial intelligence in New Zealand in 2026: government strategy, the Privacy Act’s IPP 3A, regulators, data residency, the ecosystem and adoption.https://levystreet.com/research/ai-agents-for-gtm-research/https://levystreet.com/research/ai-agents-for-gtm-research/What GTM-Bench shows about AI agents for sales prospecting: data access beats model size, precision beats volume. Results, lessons and NZ guidance.https://levystreet.com/learn/writing-useful-business-prompts/https://levystreet.com/learn/writing-useful-business-prompts/Write ChatGPT prompts for business that work first time: a five-part structure, a Dunedin electrician’s worked example and a 20-minute exercise.https://levystreet.com/learn/writing-ai-vendor-requirements/https://levystreet.com/learn/writing-ai-vendor-requirements/AI procurement for NZ businesses: turn rough notes into numbered, testable vendor requirements covering accuracy, data handling, security, cost and exit.https://levystreet.com/learn/writing-a-workflow-specification/https://levystreet.com/learn/writing-a-workflow-specification/AI workflow design starts on paper: use an AI interviewer to write a one-page workflow spec with inputs, steps, exceptions, human review and measures.https://levystreet.com/learn/working-with-images-in-business-ai/https://levystreet.com/learn/working-with-images-in-business-ai/Multimodal AI for NZ businesses: read photos, receipts, whiteboards and charts with AI, measure its error rate on your images, and keep people out of frame.https://levystreet.com/learn/when-a-workflow-does-not-need-an-agent/https://levystreet.com/learn/when-a-workflow-does-not-need-an-agent/AI agents vs automation: a decision rule for choosing between deleting a step, rules automation, one AI step or an agent, tested on tasks from your own week.https://levystreet.com/learn/using-ai-to-prepare-management-reports/https://levystreet.com/learn/using-ai-to-prepare-management-reports/Use AI for management reporting without invented explanations: draft monthly variance commentary from your P&L and managers' notes, then tie out every number.https://levystreet.com/learn/using-ai-for-meeting-preparation/https://levystreet.com/learn/using-ai-for-meeting-preparation/AI meeting preparation in 20 minutes: turn your notes, emails and numbers into a one-page brief with an agenda, decisions, questions and checked facts.https://levystreet.com/learn/using-ai-for-market-research/https://levystreet.com/learn/using-ai-for-market-research/AI market research for NZ businesses: size a niche from Stats NZ data, check competitors and tag every claim as found, calculated, assumed or unverified.https://levystreet.com/learn/using-ai-for-customer-support-drafts/https://levystreet.com/learn/using-ai-for-customer-support-drafts/Use AI for customer support safely: draft replies from a one-page rules sheet, keep a person sending every message, and grade drafts on real NZ emails.https://levystreet.com/learn/using-ai-for-accessibility-checks/https://levystreet.com/learn/using-ai-for-accessibility-checks/AI accessibility checks for NZ teams: review a web page against WCAG 2.2 AA with AI, map issues to success criteria, and know which tests still need people.https://levystreet.com/learn/understanding-retrieval-augmented-generation/https://levystreet.com/learn/understanding-retrieval-augmented-generation/Retrieval augmented generation explained for NZ teams: how RAG finds passages in your documents, why answers fail, and an exercise playing the retriever.https://levystreet.com/learn/understanding-ai-tool-permissions/https://levystreet.com/learn/understanding-ai-tool-permissions/AI agent permissions explained for NZ teams: what read, write and send access allow, whose identity an AI acts as, and how to build a permission matrix.https://levystreet.com/learn/understanding-ai-agents/https://levystreet.com/learn/understanding-ai-agents/Agentic AI explained for NZ business teams: what makes an AI agent different from a chatbot, and how to map an agent’s actions by impact before trusting it.https://levystreet.com/learn/turning-meeting-notes-into-actions/https://levystreet.com/learn/turning-meeting-notes-into-actions/Use AI meeting notes properly: turn rough notes or a transcript into an action table with owners, dates and source quotes, and flag what is unclear.https://levystreet.com/learn/training-an-internal-ai-champion/https://levystreet.com/learn/training-an-internal-ai-champion/What an AI champion does, how to pick the right person, and a six-week plan to train them, with a role card prompt and a Timaru freight example.https://levystreet.com/learn/testing-a-business-ai-assistant/https://levystreet.com/learn/testing-a-business-ai-assistant/A practical AI testing lesson for business teams: build a 20-case test set with expected answers and pass rules, run it three times, and score the results.https://levystreet.com/learn/summarising-documents-with-citations/https://levystreet.com/learn/summarising-documents-with-citations/Get an AI document summary you can check: every point cites a page and an exact quote, then spot-check the citations. Practise on a real NZ guidance PDF.https://levystreet.com/learn/rolling-out-ai-to-a-small-team/https://levystreet.com/learn/rolling-out-ai-to-a-small-team/AI adoption for small NZ teams: a 30-day plan for the people side, from an honest kickoff to weekly practice, buddy pairs and a day-30 pulse check.https://levystreet.com/learn/researching-a-customer-account/https://levystreet.com/learn/researching-a-customer-account/Learn AI sales research the careful way: build a one-page brief on a NZ prospect from public sources, with every claim linked and privacy rules respected.