And, beyond my venting about tone, here is how I get the answer to 99% of my Dorico questions:
It is astonishing how much this system helped me get up to speed with Dorico. That, and by posing detailed questions in this forum.
PL
I’m very surprised to hear this. There are a lot of posts in the forum from people saying, “I asked AI how to do x, and it told me y, but that didn’t work/those menus don’t exist/etc.” Maybe AI is (slowly) getting smarter.
Confession: I totally used AI for a Dorico question the other day. It nailed it.
I’ve been giving Notebook LM a try on matters I know or I’m interested in, and was quite surprised by the accuracy of what it told me about features in Dorico 5 and how to achieve them. So yes, some improvement might be there !
I have the lowest level of paid subscription to Gemini (about $20 a month). Sometimes the “fast” version screws up, but the “thinking” or “pro” model figures it out. You can go back and forth with it Here’s an example of a somewhat esoteric problem it clarified for me. I’ve simplified the back-and-forth a bit but this is a great example of how I use it.
PL
MY QUESTION TO GEMINI:
In Dorico, I created a custom playing technique (Solo w extension) based on the “Solo” playing technique. I renamed it “Solo w extension.” But in the playing technique panel on the right of the screen, my custom name is not showing up—there are simply two techniques called “Solo” How can I fix this?
ANSWER 1:
The issue is likely a distinction between the text that appears in the score and the Name of the Playing Technique itself (which appears in the panel). It is common to edit the appearance (what the musician sees) without updating the label used by the software interface.
Here is how to fix the name in the Playing Techniques panel:
(NOTE: I’m cutting out the part where it explained how to do this, because that wasn’t the problem.)
MY FOLLOW-UP QUESTION:
That’s not the problem. The name of my custom technique appears in that top “Name” field and in the list of playing technique names on the left side of the Library panel.
GEMINI’S FOLLOW-UP ANSWER (which was correct):
I understand now. The issue lies in how the Playing Techniques panel (Write Mode) generates its buttons.
The panel buttons display the printed visual appearance of the technique (what actually goes on the score), not the internal “Name” you assigned in the Library dialog.
Because your custom technique “Solo w extension” is set to print the text “Solo” on the music staff, Dorico generates a button that simply says “Solo.” This results in two buttons that look identical because both techniques result in the same printed text.
Hover your mouse: If you hover your cursor over the two “Solo” buttons in the panel, a tooltip will appear. One will say “Solo” and the other will say “Solo w extension”.
Use the Popover (Recommended): Instead of using the panel, press Shift + P and type the unique alias you set (e.g., solowext). This is faster and avoids the visual confusion of the panel entirely.
I can appreciate your frustration. I had it when trying to work with the program at first. I think I was more upset that MakeMusic left all of us stranded and I can tell you Broadway for decades was almost exclusive to Finale and I have been using it since v7. I think I started working with Finale in 1995 so needless to say, I was not looking forward to learning another program. I did the Udemy program and went module by module and in the end, I’ve been using Dorico 100% of the time for over a year and half now. First thing I can recommend is don’t think of it as a new Finale. It’s not, it’s a totally well thought out UI that is totally constumizable. I would start with transcribing a basic piano or instrument part. Then I would transcribe a simple score. Templates are your friend and so are the custom keyboard shortcuts. What I can do with just a regular keyboard is quite impressive. I can do pretty much everything from a small laptop. Combine it with Noteperformer and it’s quite an impressive piece of software. Give it time and learn a couple of new things at each session. There’s still stuff I have to look up, but for basic scoring, I can get through a chart fairly quickly. Dorico does stuff so well that it will cut your productivity in half; especially when it comes to dynamics and articulations. It’s very smart. I will say that Layouts can be confusing along with condensing. What I love about Dorico is Steinberg and their team. The developers listen and actually implement ideas into their updates. Steinberg is owned by Yamaha and is music oriented. You can not say that about Avid, especially after them being bought a couple of years ago. The forums and the YouTube videos they host are very informative.
Ah yes… AI’s favorite lie. 
Its second favorite is “you are absolutely correct!”
Haha! Well, “Understand” may be the wrong word. But it DID get me to the answer, which I believe would have been EXTREMELY difficult to find any other way. To cut through all the verbiage: in this screenshot, you’ll see two playing techniques listed as “Solo.” One of them is the standard one, whereas the one I created has the word “Solo” plus an extension line. I changed the name of the second one to “Solo w extension,” and I couldn’t figure out why that name wasn’t being displayed in the playing techniques panel. Turns out, Dorico doesn’t display the NAME of the playing technique there, but rather, only the text that gets used in the score when you select the technique. However, if you simply hover over the technique in that panel, you WILL see the name.
My point is, it’s the kind of twitchy answer that, if I tried to find it on my own, would have taken me… who knows? Instead I had the answer in five minutes. Make of that what you will!
PL
Ask the forum and it would probably have been even quicker (and more informed)
Oh, I’m already fairly bullish on AI for this sort of thing.
I love this forum—best, most responsive forum I’ve ever been on. But nope, not even close—this was even faster than the forum… 
Now, there are certainly times when consulting the forum is preferable. But for “how do you do this” type questions, Gemini is amazing.
I’m sure AI will improve, but there are many instances where it has given plain wrong advice. And we have had to deal with the fallout.
I hear ya, and I get your frustration. The fact is, it’s a tool—you have to learn how to use it. If you read through the Gemini exchange I copy/pasted earlier in this thread, you’ll see that I didn’t settle for the wrong answer it gave me at first (not “wrong” but irrelevant—not germane to my use case). When I gave it more details, it gave me the right answer, and on something pretty esoteric. Of course it will improve. But there’s no need to wait—I have found it, even in its current state, mind-blowingly useful, assuming you’re willing to push it. Caveat: I only ever use Gemini, so I don’t know how effective the other chatbots are.
PL
If it works for you - great.
But when it doesn’t, it is we on the forum that get the residual resentment, not Gemini.
Grok, Claude… they all work well for me.
If it hallucinates regarding Dorico, it’s not like it causes any real problems anyways. Usually it’s just “Huh, that’s clearly not there.”
I totally get that, and feel your pain! But just as plenty of people on this forum say “Why can’t Dorico do this simple thing that took me two seconds in Finale,” and it turns out not only that Dorico CAN do it, but it can do it ten times better than Finale ever could, I’d simply point out that it is highly probable that a lot of people who say that Gemini was “wrong” about something simply don’t know how to interact with AI. YES it’s wrong—often. The question is, if you TELL it “that’s wrong,” does it dig deeper and find the real answer? In my experience, maybe 90% of the time, it does. The only point I’m making is that user error plays a role in bad Gemini outcomes, just as it does with every other piece of software. Anyway, I do very much appreciate this forum and the effort you and other major contributors devote to it.
PL
There are none so deaf as those who will not hear…
Riccardo, your comment might prove the exception; in my experience, the general attitude is overwhelmingly positive.
I am actually happy to be the exception, if the alternative is fitting into an environment that, with the due exceptions, often feels dominated by hazing and toxic dynamics.
