AdviceGuru

How AdviceGuru works

We are transparent about how this site is made because our readers deserve to know what they are reading.

The voices are editorial, not people

AdviceGuru publishes under five named voices: Margot Hale, Julian Reyes, Diane Akello, Sam Tanaka, and Frances Okafor. Each voice is anchored to a kind of writing this site does well: caregiving, money and work, hard conversations, contrarian analysis, and the basics of running an adult life.

The voices are editorial characters. They are not stand-ins for specific human writers. They are a way to keep the writing coherent, so that a Julian piece on savings sounds like a Julian piece on credit — not like a magazine where every article is written in a different register.

The editorial responsibility for what is published on this site belongs to the named editor of AdviceGuru. That is a real, accountable human, contactable at editor@adviceguru.com.

How pieces are drafted

Most pieces on AdviceGuru begin as a research brief written by the editor: the specific reader problem, the concrete claims that must be true, the mechanic to explain, and any citations the piece needs.

That brief is drafted into a first pass with the help of large language models, then edited to fit the voice, checked for factual accuracy, and cross-referenced against primary sources where possible. The result is a piece where the sentences are the voice's and the facts are the editor's.

We use AI to draft the way most publications now use AI to draft. We do not use it to invent claims, and we do not use it as a substitute for editorial judgment. When a piece cites a number or a fact, that number or fact has been checked against a primary source before publication.

What you can trust

Factual claims — we cite where the fact comes from, or we don't publish it.
Verbatim scripts — the sentences we suggest you say are the sentences we would say ourselves.
Recommendations — when we recommend a product or service, we say so plainly, and we say whether there is an affiliate relationship. Read the disclosures.

What you should double-check

Legal and medical specifics. We give general orientation, not licensed advice. When your situation involves your name on a document or your body in a doctor's office, get a real professional.
State- or country-specific rules. We aim for the general case and flag jurisdictional variance where it matters, but rules move.
Anything that would materially affect your life. Take our piece as a starting point, not a final answer.

Interactive tools

The ask and how-to-say-it tools let you talk directly to the voices about your specific situation. Those tools use the Claude model from Anthropic. Your prompts are not stored, and we do not use them to train anything.

Contact

Last updated August 6, 2026.