Not What You Meant book cover

Not What You Meant

…and why AI keeps answering anyway

A book for executives.

About what happens when intent moves through systems.

And for anyone who’s ever said, “that’s not what I meant.”

Most of the time, nothing is broken.

The request makes sense. The output looks fine. The work gets done.

And yet—something doesn’t move.

This book came out of noticing that pattern too many times to ignore. Not just with AI, but anywhere work moves from intent to execution and something quietly drifts along the way.

It’s not a book about prompts. It’s not about productivity. It’s not about using AI “better.”

It’s about what happens when clarity stops being optional.

For most of our working lives, being vague was survivable. People filled in the gaps. Context traveled implicitly. Someone downstream repaired what was left unsaid.

That environment is less reliable now.

When instructions move through systems that don’t pause, don’t infer, and don’t ask follow-up questions, whatever is missing doesn’t get fixed. It gets executed.

This book doesn’t offer techniques or frameworks to apply. It doesn’t tell you how to think, what to change, or how to get better outcomes.

It names a structural gap that was always there— and explains why it’s suddenly visible.

The problem usually isn’t that something went wrong.
It’s that nothing obviously did.

About the author

Andres Velasquez has spent his career working at the intersection of systems, technology, and the people expected to make sense of both.

Most of that work involved things that didn’t fail loudly— projects that looked complete but didn’t land, decisions that felt clear but didn’t move anything forward, and work that met the requirements while still missing the point.

This book came from watching that happen often enough to recognize the pattern.