The Standard · Operations and Administration
Technical Writing
Writes technical documentation with AI and verifies every step works as written.
You write runbooks, API references, procedures, and troubleshooting guides from technical sources. An AI assistant helps draft and adapt them, but can invent commands, omit prerequisites, or describe steps that fail.
The exam for Technical Writing is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Technical Writing, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the assistant to anticipate reader questions, compare implementation options, and expose documentation gaps.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You give the assistant source facts, reader, purpose, format, length, and required sections for a technical document.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the draft into an accurate, audience-layered document by editing, restructuring, and adding your technical reasoning.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check every generated procedure, command, parameter, and claim against authoritative technical sources before release.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep credentials, personal data, restricted system details, and unsafe instructions out of the brief and published document.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which documentation content the assistant drafts, what technical judgement stays with you, and who approves risks.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A runbook from approved procedures, system constraints, and failure conditions.
- 02
An API reference from an interface schema, parameter definitions, and example responses.
- 03
A troubleshooting guide from fault symptoms, diagnostic steps, and recovery actions.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in technical writing. They briefed the assistant with source procedures and audience constraints, caught impossible steps, and delivered a tested runbook.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Technical Writing
- Who it is for
- Technical writers, engineers, and documentation owners who produce and maintain operational guidance.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Workflow & Process Improvement
Maps and improves a process with AI and tests the change before rolling it out.
- Meeting Minutes & Action Tracking
Turns meetings into minutes and actions with AI, checked against what was said.
Practice only
- Remote Team Management
Runs a remote team with AI-assisted coordination and keeps people, not tools, informed and accountable.
- Personal Productivity
Organises their own work with AI and knows what to automate and what to keep by hand.
- Meetings
Prepares, runs and follows up meetings with AI, from agenda to verified actions.
Practice only
- Knowledge Management
Builds and maintains a knowledge base with AI and keeps it accurate and current.
- Records & Information Management
Manages records with AI-assisted classification and retention, correctly and lawfully.
- Standard Operating Procedures
Writes standard operating procedures with AI and checks them against how the work is done.
Everything in Operations and Administration, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Technical Writing covers this skill. No book is required to pass.