AI Assistant Guide

3-Minute Quick Start: How to Use the AI Assistant Efficiently

Prompting Tips

Bad

Help me write a formula

Too vague — the AI doesn't know which formula you need

Good

In @main.tex chapter 3, add the quadratic formula using the equation environment with numbering

Specifies file, location, formula content, and formatting requirements

Core Principles

Use @ to reference files — Type @ to select a file, and the AI will read its content before acting
help.quickstart.principles.1
Describe the specifics — Don't say "add a table", say "add a 3x4 table of experimental data"
Review changes before applying — AI edits generate pending changes first; confirm before clicking Apply
Math Formulas
Inline Formula
In @main.tex, replace 'energy formula' with the inline formula $E = mc^2$

Formulas wrapped in $ are embedded within the text line

Numbered Equation
In the methods section of @main.tex, add the following formula using the equation environment:\nLoss function L = -\sum_{i} y_i \log(\hat{y}_i)

The equation environment auto-numbers; use \label and \ref for cross-references

Multiline Aligned Formula
In @main.tex, add a piecewise function definition using the cases environment:\nf(x) = x^2 when x >= 0, f(x) = -x when x < 0

The align environment supports multiline alignment; cases is suitable for piecewise functions

Matrix
In @main.tex, add a 3x3 identity matrix using the bmatrix environment

bmatrix for bracketed matrices, pmatrix for parenthesized matrices

Tables
Basic Data Table
In the experiments section of @main.tex, add a table with Method/Accuracy/F1-score columns, with 3 rows of sample data
Booktabs Table
In @main.tex, add a booktabs table (using the booktabs package) showing performance comparison of different models, with Model Name/Parameters/Accuracy/Inference Time columns

Standard academic table format; requires \usepackage{booktabs}

Multicolumn Table
In @main.tex, create an experiment results table with the first row using multicolumn to merge cells as a category header
References
Add BibTeX Entry
Add this paper to my references: Attention Is All You Need, Vaswani et al., 2017, NeurIPS

The AI will automatically generate a BibTeX entry and add it to the .bib file

Add via DOI
Add the paper with DOI 10.1145/3292500.3330919 to my references

Providing a DOI yields precise bibliographic information

Batch Citations
In the related work section of @main.tex, add \cite citations for each mentioned method
Document Structure
Paper Skeleton
Help me create a basic academic paper structure in @main.tex: Abstract, Introduction, Related Work, Methods, Experiments, Conclusion, with a placeholder sentence for each section
Add Subsections
Under the methods section in @main.tex, add subsections 3.1 Problem Definition, 3.2 Model Architecture, and 3.3 Training Strategy
Add Appendix
At the end of @main.tex, add an appendix section containing a hyperparameter settings table and additional experiment results
Common Issues and Fixes

Common Prompting Failure Patterns

BadHelp me improve my paper
GoodPolish the introduction in chapter 2 of @main.tex to make it more academic

No file or scope specified — the AI doesn't know what to edit

BadAdd a figure
GoodIn the experiments section of @main.tex, add \includegraphics referencing figures/result.png, set width to 0.8\textwidth, and add the caption 'Experiment comparison'

Need to specify image path, location, size, and caption

BadCompilation error
GoodAnalyze and fix the compile error in @main.tex. Error: Undefined control sequence \bm

Best to attach the error message, or click Error Diagnostics to let the AI check automatically

Compile Checklist