Three years ago, in the early months after ChatGPT arrived, I predicted that “Alternative Grading in the Age of AI” would be the next best selling book on the faculty development circuit. Here we are three years later, and while this text has yet to materialize, I’m finally ready to dip my Hobbit-like toes into this realm. For years, I’ve avoided alternative grading. Not because I didn't believe in it—experts like David Clark, Robert Talbert, and Rachel Weir have laid out compelling frameworks. I avoided it because the organizational infrastructure felt overwhelming. The complexity of managing standards, tracking individual student progress across multiple attempts, and generating reassessment variations kept me stuck in my traditional points-based grading rut. Last semester changed that. Using AI to teach writing and design thinking—courses I'd never taught—showed me something crucial: AI can handle exactly this kind of organizational complexity.…