AI for everything besides coding

I use Claude Code all day for my job. That part of my AI use is easy to describe: there's a repo, a ticket, a diff at the end.

Chats are different. When I open a chat, it's usually because I want to search for something but I already know the search will go badly. The question is a little odd, or very specific to me, or I want the answer from one particular angle. So I wondered: if AI is improving my life anywhere outside of work, it's probably in those chats. Did they save me time I spent on something better, or did it go to mindless browsing (which I am trying to cut down on)?

I went back through everything from mid-August, around when I updated our family trip plan, to last weekend. That's August 15 to October 25, 2026: 20 conversations.

The short version: the chats that helped most went past the question I typed, to what I was actually trying to do.

What I actually asked

Almost none of these would have gone well as a search.

I asked about price and got a perfumer

The best result came from a fragrance chat. In September I asked for the best price on Hermès Un Jardin sur le Nil, then the per-ounce cost at FragranceX, then: if I really like this one, what else should I try?

It answered by the perfumer instead of the brand. Un Jardin sur le Nil is a Jean-Claude Ellena fragrance, and the thing I liked about it is his style: watery, green, light. So it pointed me to six more in that style that FragranceX carries.

I bought two from FragranceX: Le Jardin de Monsieur Li, 3.3 oz for $66.45, and a 1.7 oz Un Jardin sur le Nil for $71.87. I wouldn't have bought from that site at all without the recommendation and the price breakdown. They're my new go-to fragrances.

A search for "perfumes like Un Jardin sur le Nil" would have given me a listicle. I got an explanation of why I liked the one I liked, and that's what made the next purchase easy.

I asked for an air freshener and got sent to a cabinet

I have three cats, and our open kitchen and living room had a lingering cat food smell. I asked for the best air freshener strategy and told it to ask me as many questions as it needed. After a few rounds, its answer was that an air freshener should be the last step.

The smell was a constant haze, worse on warm days, with no obvious source. That pattern pointed to something soaking up odor and slowly releasing it. The likely culprit was the cabinet that holds the recycling bin. Rinsed cans still carry fish oil, and it guessed the inside was bare wood that had been absorbing it for months. The second suspect was the gasket on the microchip feeders (bowls that only open for the cat whose chip they read), which I had never taken out. The plan: scrub and seal the cabinet with a shellac primer, take the feeders apart, run the range hood at feeding time, and only then add scent. It also warned that essential oil diffusers aren't safe around cats.

Then it corrected itself. When I asked whether its air purifier pick was the most recommended, it said no. It had given me the Austin Air HealthMate, an odor specialist that only covers about 234 square feet. For an open floor plan it suggested two quieter Alen BreatheSmart 75i units instead.

I had never looked inside that cabinet. It turned out to be finished, so the sealing step wasn't needed. I didn't do the whole plan either. I deep cleaned the trash cans and the cabinet and put a box of baking soda in the back. It helped, and I never bought an air freshener.

The same thing, on a smaller scale

• Eyes. I have meibomian gland dysfunction, where the oil glands in your eyelids don't work well, and wanted a routine that balanced heat against inflammation. It built a daily log I keep on my phone: redness, burning, whether I did the heat routine, glasses or contacts. Once it has three days on each side, it compares contact days against glasses days, so I'll have a real number for my eye doctor. When I asked for a nightly reminder, it said a phone alarm would be more reliable than anything it could set up, and to label the alarm with the actual steps.
• Boulder. For Rocky Mountain Ruby, a Ruby conference in Boulder where I was speaking, I asked for hotels within a 20-minute walk of eTown Hall, under $750. I stayed at its pick, Basecamp Boulder, and so did another speaker. The walk was easy. It also told me to skip Mount Sanitas on day one, since I'd be going from Omaha's elevation to 5,430 feet. When I asked what coffee to bring because hotel coffee is awful, it checked first: Basecamp puts a kettle and pour-over in most rooms. Heads up for coffee snobs: the in-room pour-over is not good. Skip it and go out for coffee in Boulder instead.
• Orlando. The night before Epic Universe I asked for early entry times. It gave me 9am early admission and 10am open, and said the times came from TouringPlans because Universal's own hours page wouldn't load. That's the answer to "can I trust this," which I hadn't asked.
• Slack. The Monday after Orlando, I asked how to catch up on a week of Slack. It worked out the approach with me before running anything, so I got a to-do list instead of a channel-by-channel summary. In 23 minutes I had the two threads where I still owed an answer, and draft replies for both.

When it just answered the question

The rest of the chats did exactly what I asked, and that was fine. The cracker chat took five minutes: more flax and chia, crackers because I had Parmesan, and measurements fixed after it called for 0.8 cup of something. The anti-inflammatory dinner swaps ended with Barilla Protein+ because I don't like whole wheat pasta, and an Aldi list in my email. The piano studio's tuition policy became a year of calendar reminders with each month's amount. Orchestra Omaha, where I play viola and help out on the board, got a concert program and a 90-second intro with a Huskers joke. At Talus, a restaurant in Omaha, it picked the best buy on the wine list, Louis Jadot Mâcon-Villages at $9 a glass. I ordered it, a nice light white, and it was better than the cheese board it was supposed to pair with.

Patterns

• I lead with my constraints. "I do not wear shorts." "I have Parmesan." "3 cats." "I'm not on my laptop that late." That's what gives it enough to notice when I'm asking the wrong question.
• I edit replies like a draft. "Reword shorter." "Funnier." "Just give bullet points." "Normal cups." The first answer is raw material.
• The useful ones end somewhere else. An email, a calendar entry, a Slack draft, a tracker on my phone, a bottle on my dresser.
• I start new chats instead of going back. I asked about an easy Boulder hike twice, a month apart. When I did stay in one thread, like the Orlando packing list, it already had the clothing list and park days when I asked for a weather check.
• They happen at the edges of my day. Early mornings, like the concert program at 7:41, the Steam Deck at 7:51, and the dinner swaps at 8:03. And evenings, like Talus at 6:08, the orchestra intro at 6:14 for a speech I gave at 7 (I asked for the final bullet points at 6:58), fragrances at 7:12, and packing at 8:26.

Did it save me time?

For the chats where I could compare, here's the time in the chat against how long the task usually takes me:

That's roughly an hour and a half to almost three hours saved, over ten weeks. Most of it came from two chats, Slack and the concert program.

Meh, kinda.

The fragrance chat was 37 minutes of pure rabbit hole, and I loved it. Over-analyzing something before I buy it is one of my favorite things. I do a lot of Amazon window shopping (I've written about that cart before): things go into the cart or save-for-later and never come out. This time I actually bought something, and I'm happy with it, because I smell great!

The best chats answered the question I should have asked, and no search would have gotten me there.