AI rules vs manual rules

Not everything needs AI. Manual rules are instant and free; AI rules handle the judgement calls. Knowing which to reach for keeps your feed both cheap and high-quality.

Use a manual rule when…

• The transformation is mechanical — concatenate fields, find & replace, set a static value.
• The logic is a clear condition — IF stock = 0 THEN exclude.
• You want zero cost and instant results.

Use an AI rule when…

• The task needs language judgement — writing a description, summarising, rephrasing.
• You're inferring something not explicitly in a field — colour or material from free text.
• The source data is too inconsistent for a fixed rule.

Combine them

The best feeds use both: manual rules to structure and clean the data (free, instant), and AI to enrich the parts that need writing or inference. Manual rules also make AI cheaper — clean inputs mean better, more cache-friendly AI output.