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I built a workflow called InnerWeather to help me understand fluctuations in energy, pain and mood over time, in the context of neurodivergence and a chronic muscular pain condition. The workflow creates lightweight daily scans and a weekly overview. Its purpose is not to diagnose symptoms or pretend that every change has a single cause. Instead, it helps make patterns visible across time: when energy drops, when pain increases, when stimulation or emotional load seems higher, how recovery unfolds, and which combinations tend to appear together. The daily scans are possible because I naturally talk to GPT throughout the day, sometimes in very short updates and sometimes in longer conversations, about how things are going, what I am doing, how my body feels, how much energy I have, and what seems to be affecting me. InnerWeather uses those scattered moments as observational material. It does not require me to fill in a formal tracker several times a day. The information is already present in the conversations I am having. The daily scans do not reduce an entire day to one fixed state. They map changing moments across the day, using colour-coded states and paying attention to common transitions between them. That makes it possible to see not only how I felt, but how my internal state moved: whether high stimulation tends to be followed by fatigue, whether pain appears after certain kinds of activity, or whether a low-energy period gradually shifts into recovery. This matters because capacity can vary significantly within one day. A difficult morning does not necessarily define the whole day, and a good afternoon does not erase what happened before it. The workflow is also explicit about uncertainty. If there was not enough input during a particular day to support a meaningful observation, the daily scan says so rather than filling in the gaps. The same applies to the weekly overview: if the available material is too sparse or uneven to support a pattern, that limitation is recorded instead of turning absence of information into a conclusion. The weekly overview brings the daily fluctuations together and looks for recurring sequences, transitions, clusters and recovery patterns across the week rather than treating each day as an isolated event. An important part of the workflow is that the weekly review is also collaborative. When the overview is generated, I use it as a starting point to think together with GPT about what patterns seem to be emerging, whether the current colour codes and transitions are capturing them well enough, and what might need to change in the workflow itself. That means InnerWeather is not a fixed tracker. The task evolves with the patterns it is trying to observe. If a recurring state, transition or distinction is missing, we can refine the categories, adjust the scan, or change the weekly interpretation so the system becomes better at representing what is actually happening. The aim is practical rather than medical: to get a more realistic sense of capacity and recovery over time, so I can make better decisions about pacing, rest, creative work, appointments, and how much I can reasonably take on. I especially like that the workflow treats fluctuations as information rather than failure. Instead of asking only, “Why was I worse today?”, it can reveal a broader sequence: what came before, how the state changed, how long it lasted, and what recovery looked like afterwards. Over time, InnerWeather becomes both a personal pattern archive and an evolving observation tool. In simple terms: day-to-day conversation → colour-coded fluctuation map → transitions across the day → weekly pattern review → collaborative interpretation → refine the task → better future scans The goal is not to predict my body perfectly. It is to keep improving the map while remaining honest about what the available information can and cannot support.

I built a small GPT automation called PatternSpeak that periodically looks back across my conversations for ideas, themes, or approaches that keep resurfacing over time. It is not meant to analyze me or turn recurring thoughts into tasks. Its job is much simpler: occasionally say, in effect, “Hey, this idea keeps coming back. Maybe there is something here.” I like it because repetition can be meaningful without being urgent. Sometimes an idea disappears for weeks and then returns in a completely different context. PatternSpeak helps me notice those echoes without forcing them into a productivity system. It feels less like tracking and more like having a friendly observer tap me on the shoulder when a thread has quietly become a pattern. It works very well with the scan and analysis workflow I also shared here. Step-by-step: 1. I use PatternSpeak to periodically look back across my conversations. 2. It identifies ideas, themes, or approaches that keep resurfacing over time. 3. When it notices a recurring thread, it surfaces it as a gentle prompt rather than turning it into a task. 4. I review the recurring ideas and notice whether they have become meaningful patterns, even when they return in different contexts. 5. I use the scan and analysis workflow I also shared here alongside PatternSpeak.

I built a playful GPT workflow called Prosperity Oracle, inspired by the astrology and mystical magazine columns I loved in the 1990s. It is deliberately not financial advice, forecasting, or decision support. It is a small ritual of fun: part horoscope, part creative prompt, and part retro-internet weirdness. Instead of asking GPT to optimize something useful, I wanted to recreate the slightly magical feeling of opening a magazine and finding a mysterious prediction written just for me. Sometimes AI does not need to increase productivity. Sometimes it can simply make the day a little stranger and more delightful—and, on some days, inspire my artwork. Step-by-step: 1. I drew inspiration from the astrology and mystical magazine columns I loved in the 1990s. 2. I built Prosperity Oracle as a playful GPT workflow that produces a horoscope-style experience. 3. I framed it as a ritual of fun, creative prompting, and retro-internet weirdness—not as financial advice, forecasting, or decision support. 4. I used the format to recreate the feeling of discovering a mysterious prediction written just for me. 5. I let the results serve as creative inspiration for my artwork.

I built a workflow to examine complaints I had about a local bureaucratic service and check whether my account of what happened was supported by the written record. I was concerned about delays, incomplete handling, and the way my case progressed after I gave feedback about a harmful aspect of the service and asked for a different person to handle the dossier. That request was refused. Afterwards, I felt that the process had become slower, more confusing, and more prone to mistakes. Rather than asking GPT to confirm that the service had handled things badly, I used it to test my own interpretation against the evidence. I asked GPT to review the relevant emails and dossier communications, reconstruct the chronology, and identify requests, replies, delays, unresolved issues, and changes in how the case was handled over time. We then compared the periods before and after my feedback and request for reassignment. The central questions were deliberately neutral: Were my complaints grounded in the correspondence? Did the handling of the dossier objectively become slower or more incomplete afterwards? Were there concrete errors or unanswered questions in the record? Or was I remembering the experience as worse than the documentation supported? This distinction mattered to me. The workflow was not designed to produce a verdict or turn frustration into evidence after the fact. It was designed to challenge my assumptions and separate what I felt from what could actually be demonstrated. Where the documentation supported a complaint, we could point to the relevant chronology, delays, unanswered questions, or inconsistencies. Where the evidence was incomplete or ambiguous, that was noted too. The result was a more grounded account of the case: not “I know this was handled terribly,” but “these are the parts of my experience that are supported by the written record, these are the parts that remain uncertain, and this is where the timeline changed.” In simple terms, the workflow was: emails and dossier communications → chronology reconstruction → before-and-after comparison → review of delays, errors, and unresolved issues → evidence check against my complaints → a grounded account of what can and cannot be supported. What I liked about this workflow was that it used AI as a reality-checking tool rather than an agreement machine. It helped me test whether my criticism was actually anchored in the record before I relied on it in further communication. Step-by-step: 1. I gathered the relevant emails and dossier communications about my case. 2. I asked GPT to reconstruct the chronology and identify requests, replies, delays, unresolved issues, and changes in how the case was handled. 3. I compared the period before and after my feedback about a harmful aspect of the service and my request for reassignment, which was refused. 4. I examined whether the record showed that the process became slower or more incomplete, and whether it contained concrete errors or unanswered questions. 5. I separated points supported by the documentation from points that remained incomplete or ambiguous. 6. I used the resulting chronology and evidence check to create a grounded account of what my complaints could and could not demonstrate.

I built a workflow called PeopleSparkles for researching people connected to creative fields, schools, collectives, residencies, local art scenes, and cultural networks. The workflow starts from a defined group of people, for example teachers, alumni, artists, current or former members of an association, residents, or associates connected to a specific academy, organization, or cultural scene. A typical research request can be as simple as: “Look at this art website and identify all current and former residents and associates. Build a list. Then research them in batches of ten, checking their websites and other relevant sources, and write a short description of their work. Deliver the results in a format that can be imported into my local database.” Before each new research run, I provide GPT with a ZIP containing the current state of the PeopleSparkles database. This means the research starts from the existing corpus rather than from scratch. New people can be added, existing entries can be expanded, and previously researched people can be recognized before new material is prepared for import. The actual database lives locally on my computer. Apart from the initial development of the code and the research needed to create new lists of people, the database itself runs locally. Once a new batch has been researched and imported, browsing, organizing, scoring, annotating, and using the material does not require the whole corpus to be sent back for analysis. The database also generates a human-readable HTML version with a designed layout, so the research is not trapped inside raw data or spreadsheets. I can browse the people and their notes visually as a small personal research publication, while the underlying structured data remains available for future additions and processing. The “Sparkles” part is personal. I can add my own notes and scores to each person to capture whether their work sparked something in me, and if so, how. That might be curiosity, recognition, inspiration, aesthetic attraction, a strong question, a surprising association, or simply the desire to look again. This means the database does not only record who someone is and what they make. It also records my evolving relationship to their work. Over time, that creates a second layer on top of the research corpus: not just a map of creative people, but a map of resonance. The database also includes a “Surprise me” function that brings up a person from the collection without me choosing them deliberately. This helps break habitual search patterns and allows older, less obvious, or previously overlooked entries to resurface. Someone I barely noticed months ago can suddenly become relevant in a completely different creative context. The purpose is not to create conventional biographies. I am interested in the sparks around a person: what they make, the media and themes they work with, the organizations or people they connect to, and which traces may lead somewhere unexpected. This is particularly useful for creative ecosystems where information is fragmented across artist websites, academy pages, exhibition archives, old posters, association websites, interviews, catalogues, and small cultural organizations. The workflow gathers those fragments into a cumulative research corpus. It also allows the research to grow organically. One artist may lead to a collective, a teacher to a former student, an exhibition to another maker, or an old membership list to someone whose work would never have appeared in a conventional search. In simple terms: existing local database → new source or people list → GPT-assisted discovery and research in batches → import-ready structured data → local database → HTML browsing, notes and scores → surprise rediscovery → new creative connections The result is a living creative research database that combines external research with personal resonance, so I can not only discover people, but also trace which work actually sparks something in me over time.

I built a workflow for turning large ChatGPT conversation exports into a usable personal and creative archive instead of simply storing them as backups. The archive is processed incrementally. The inventory is built offline, and conversations that have already been indexed are not needlessly reanalyzed on every run. Each new export is compared with the existing archive, and only newly added conversations or conversations that have been revisited, extended, or otherwise changed are processed again and updated in the inventory. This keeps the workflow lightweight while allowing the archive to evolve over time. A conversation can remain stable for months, then become relevant again and receive new material without forcing the entire archive back through analysis. This matters because many of my conversations are long, layered thinking sessions: creative explorations, project development, research, problem-solving, or extended reflection. Without an inventory, the depth inside those individual conversations and thinking processes becomes difficult to retrieve later. The workflow makes long-form analysis and creative thought processes findable and reusable without flattening them into a few generic summaries. On top of the inventory, I use lightweight “blubscans” (analysis to improve retrieval): small, human-readable summaries that capture what mattered during a day or period without replacing the original conversations. They act as a navigational layer between thousands of raw messages and the things I may want to find, understand, revisit, or continue later. The important principle is that compression never becomes deletion. The raw conversations remain the source of truth, the inventory provides structure, and the scans provide context and tone. The result is more than a backup system. It becomes working creative memory: something I can preserve, search, revisit, connect across time, and reuse for projects, research, writing, pattern-finding, and future creative work. In simple terms, the structure is: raw exports → offline incremental inventory → blubscans/context layer → retrieval and reuse for later projects and creative work That way, the archive stays deep without becoming heavy, and useful without constantly reprocessing everything that was already understood. Step-by-step: 1. I collect large ChatGPT conversation exports as the raw source material for the archive. 2. I build and maintain an offline inventory of the conversations that have been indexed. 3. With each new export, I compare the conversations against the existing archive. 4. I process only newly added conversations and conversations that have been revisited, extended, or otherwise changed. 5. I update the inventory with the results while leaving stable conversations untouched. 6. I create lightweight “blubscans” with small, human-readable summaries of what mattered during a day or period. 7. I use the raw conversations as the source of truth, the inventory for structure, and the scans for context and tone. 8. I retrieve and reuse the archive for projects, research, writing, pattern-finding, and future creative work.

I built a workflow to evaluate whether communication with a legal counseling service was as slow and incomplete as it felt. Email was my primary—and necessary—communication channel with them. I had become increasingly dissatisfied with delayed replies, partial answers, and questions that seemed to remain unresolved. Rather than relying only on memory or frustration, I asked GPT to review the relevant Gmail correspondence and turn it into a structured communication inventory. The workflow identified my outgoing questions, their replies, and whether each question had been fully answered, partially answered, or left open. From that inventory, we could calculate concrete indicators such as the median response time, the longest delay between a question and a substantive reply, and the number of questions that remained unresolved or were only partly addressed. This was useful because long email threads can create a distorted sense of what happened. A few frustrating exchanges can dominate memory, while other delays or omissions disappear into dozens of messages. Structuring the correspondence made the pattern measurable. The analysis was not meant to decide whether the counselors were “good” or “bad.” It was meant to answer narrower questions: How quickly were questions usually answered? Which ones were not answered? Were replies resolving the issues raised, or only responding to part of them? Afterward, we created a clear list of the questions that were still open. I used that list as a set of dossier questions when moving the case to another counselor, turning the analysis into practical continuity rather than just a complaint about the past. In simple terms: Gmail correspondence → question-and-response inventory → response-time and completeness analysis → unresolved-question list → handover to another counselor What I liked about this workflow is that it turned a vague feeling that “this communication is not working” into a documented overview I could actually use. Step-by-step: 1. I gathered the relevant Gmail correspondence with the legal counseling service. 2. I asked GPT to identify my outgoing questions, the counselors’ replies, and the status of each question. 3. I classified each question as fully answered, partially answered, or left open. 4. I calculated indicators including the median response time, the longest delay before a substantive reply, and the number of unresolved or partly addressed questions. 5. I created a clear list of the questions that remained open. 6. I used that list as dossier questions when handing the case over to another counselor.

I built a custom AI knowledge-transfer GPT designed to prevent institutional knowledge from walking out the door when an experienced employee leaves. The trigger was an experienced operations manager preparing to leave the organization. I realized that while we had procedures, files, emails and account documentation, a huge amount of operational knowledge existed only in that manager’s head: customer preferences, recurring staffing problems, site-specific quirks, key relationships, historical issues, workarounds, lessons learned and the small details that can take a replacement months to discover. My goal was to capture that knowledge and turn it into an interactive resource for the incoming operations manager. First, I conducted and recorded an in-depth interview with the departing manager. Instead of only asking standard turnover questions, I had them walk through the operation as if they were personally training their replacement. We discussed customers, employees, locations, scheduling, recurring problems, escalation procedures, communication preferences, historical decisions and things they believed a new manager might not realize immediately. I then transcribed the conversation and used AI to analyze the interview for knowledge gaps. I asked the AI to approach the transcript from the perspective of someone taking over the job and identify important questions that had not yet been answered. Using those gaps, I had AI create customized knowledge-transfer questionnaires specifically for the departing manager. These asked more targeted questions such as: What problems happen repeatedly? What customer preferences are not documented? What exceptions exist to normal procedures? What mistakes is a new manager likely to make? What information exists only in your memory? What would you make sure your replacement understood during their first 30 days? The departing manager completed those documents, giving me another layer of institutional knowledge that would normally be lost. Next, I organized the interview transcript, completed questionnaires, operational procedures, account information, contacts, historical notes and other relevant documents into a knowledge base. I uploaded that information into a custom GPT and instructed it to function as an operational knowledge-transfer assistant. The GPT was told to base answers on the captured information, not invent answers when information was missing, and clearly tell the user when something needed to be verified. The incoming operations manager can now interact with that knowledge conversationally. Instead of searching through folders or wondering who to ask, they can say things like, “I’m meeting with this customer tomorrow. What should I know?”, “Has this location had staffing problems before?”, “Why do we handle this account differently?”, or “What should I watch for during my first month?” The GPT is now being used by the incoming manager as an ongoing reference tool. The result is essentially a searchable, interactive version of the institutional knowledge that previously would have disappeared with the departing employee. It reduces the “I don’t know what I don’t know” period of starting a new position, shortens the learning curve, improves operational continuity and helps prevent the next person from having to relearn years of lessons through trial and error. The same workflow could be recreated for retiring executives, salespeople, plant managers, administrators, project managers, maintenance supervisors or anyone whose experience contains valuable institutional knowledge. The employee can leave. Their knowledge doesn’t have to.

Instead of relying on a single AI chat, I structure the work as an executive team of specialist perspectives. I define the problem, assign roles such as CTO, product leader, economist, marketer, and skeptic, and have each expert analyze it independently. Then I run several rounds of critique so they can challenge one another’s assumptions before synthesizing their areas of agreement and disagreement. The process ends with a recommendation that includes the rationale and any remaining uncertainties. Step-by-step: 1. Define the problem clearly. 2. Assign specialist roles, such as CTO, product leader, economist, marketer, and skeptic. 3. Have each expert analyze the problem independently. 4. Run several rounds of critique in which the experts challenge one another’s assumptions. 5. Synthesize the areas of agreement and disagreement. 6. Produce a final recommendation with its rationale and remaining uncertainties.

Several months ago, my dad was in and out of the hospital. My two brothers and I were trying to coordinate his doctor appointments, manage his medications and potential interactions, and keep track of all the other details involved in his care. At one point, up to seven different doctors were seeing him in the hospital on any given day. It became important to track every medication he was taking, what each one was for, and information such as his weight and other vital statistics. When he returned home, we also had to make sure someone checked on him and his wife every day, helped him stay on schedule with his medications, and recorded his diet, mood, and weight. We initially used Apple Notes, a shared iCalendar, multiple text threads, and a weekly call between the three of us. The mental load was huge. If we needed to find information from the previous week, we had to scroll through pages of Apple Notes to locate it. We also struggled to keep the rest of the family updated. Before my dad passed away, I started using Claude Code and Codex to build a simple tool that would keep everything organized and searchable. It also displayed trends in areas such as his mood, appetite, and vital signs, and included a calendar showing who was covering which days and times. The tool was still fairly basic when he passed away. Afterward, we encountered the administrative headaches involved in closing out his estate. It was far more complicated than we expected. We thought having a will, power of attorney, and other documents meant we were prepared, but we were wrong. I began integrating those lessons—and the things we learned not to do—into the final product, Eldercare Log: eldercarelog.com. I built the final tool with Claude helping draft a PRD, which I then handed to Codex for the coding work. It took a few weeks of refining the product with Codex. The tool is hosted on Vercel, with Supabase and Stripe on the backend, and includes the security features I built into it. It is the tool I wish had existed when my brothers and I were going through this journey before my dad’s passing. Step-by-step: 1. I coordinated my dad’s doctor appointments, medications, vital statistics, and other care details with my two brothers while he was in and out of the hospital. 2. We tracked his medications, their purposes, his weight, diet, mood, appetite, and other vital signs while he was at home. 3. We coordinated daily visits and coverage using Apple Notes, a shared iCalendar, text threads, and a weekly call. 4. I used Claude Code and Codex to start building a searchable tool that organized his care information and showed simple trends. 5. I added a calendar to track which family member was covering each day and time. 6. After my dad passed away, I incorporated what we learned from handling his estate, including the things we wished we had known earlier. 7. I used Claude to draft a PRD, then gave it to Codex to handle the coding work and refined the product with Codex over several weeks. 8. I built the final tool with Vercel, Supabase, and Stripe on the backend.

AI is good at generating polished answers, but polished answers are not always your answers. When people ask AI for help with writing, strategy, or difficult decisions, it can jump too quickly to a conclusion and fill in beliefs the user has not fully examined. I created a thought-partner agent that interviews me before producing recommendations or drafts. Its job is to ask probing questions, challenge weak assumptions, surface contradictions, and separate my actual views from ideas suggested by the AI. Instead of writing for me immediately, it helps me clarify my position first. Step-by-step: 1. I give the agent the topic, decision, or idea I want to explore. 2. I tell it not to draft the final output yet. Its first job is to interview me. 3. I have it ask one focused question at a time about my reasoning, evidence, assumptions, audience, and uncertainty. 4. I require it to challenge vague claims and point out contradictions or overlap with my previous thinking. 5. I ask it to clearly separate: - conclusions I stated - ideas the AI proposed - issues that remain unresolved 6. I continue until the central belief, argument, or decision becomes clear. 7. I have the agent create a structured synthesis containing the core thesis, supporting reasoning, counterarguments, open questions, and useful language from the discussion. 8. I pass that synthesis to a writing, planning, or execution agent. I end up with a position that reflects my actual thinking rather than a plausible answer generated by AI. The final writing or strategy is more original, more consistent, and easier for downstream agents to execute.

I built a family calendar with Lovable and Claude that integrates with our Google Calendars and Todoist projects. My husband, son, dog, and I were struggling to track our schedules in one place. Although we had shared our calendars through Google, we did not have a central view displayed in the house, and the interface became cluttered when we tracked multiple calendars. We had considered buying a Skylight calendar for years, but it costs $300, and we were not convinced we needed all of its extra features. I decided to build my own instead. Step-by-step: 1. I created a product requirements document (PRD) for a family calendar in Claude. It prompted me to choose the available views, decide how to organize each family member’s calendars, support both events and tasks, and add extras such as the day’s weather and a photo background. 2. I shared the PRD with Lovable, which built the first version of the calendar. Lovable helped me integrate my Google Calendars and Todoist projects so that all of our events and tasks appeared in one place. It also helped me integrate Google Photos so our family photos could rotate in the background. 3. I launched the calendar as a password-protected website so any family member could access it from anywhere. 4. I placed the calendar on an iPad in our kitchen and edited it as we used it, learning which features were most and least helpful. I also added calendars for my in-laws when they visited for several months at a time. Claude continues to help me draft new requirements, which I share with Lovable. The calendar is tailored to our needs and costs much less than the Skylight option. The photo feature also makes it feel personal, and I look forward to continuing to evolve it over time.

“Honey, do you remember where Ryan’s practice is? Do you remember our Wi-Fi password? Do you know my TSA PRE number? Remember who that painter was that we used last year?” If you have a family with children, you may hear questions like these all the time. In a large family, there always seem to be questions about the house, the kids, or technology that could be answered more easily. The information is usually stored in different places: password files, a Rolodex of business cards, or sheets of paper in junk drawers. I set out to build an app where anyone in my family could use voice to save something for the future or retrieve something they had already stored. I integrated AI to understand the meaning of each voice note. It might create a calendar event, store a password in a vault, or simply remember a phone number. Then anyone else in the family could access the information. The app uses multi-factor authentication for anything particularly secret. It is not intended to be a dedicated password protector; I would build in much more security if that were the goal. Instead, it is an everyday-life app for remembering the little things: How long is the warranty on this appliance? Which exact light bulbs did we use here last time? What was our daughter’s email address that we needed to set up on her phone? Being able to use voice to enter information or retrieve it was the key for me. I think that will save people time. As I started adding entries and validating the idea, my wife came up with the name. After a few weeks, I knew she was completely right, because I now use it about 10 times a day—and I hear that exact phrase every time. Step-by-step: 1. I identified recurring family questions about locations, passwords, identification numbers, contacts, warranties, and household items. 2. I built an app that lets family members use voice to save or retrieve information. 3. I integrated AI to interpret the meaning of each voice note and determine whether to create a calendar event, store a password in a vault, or remember a phone number. 4. I made the stored information accessible to other family members. 5. I added multi-factor authentication for information that is particularly secret, while keeping the app focused on everyday memory rather than dedicated password protection. 6. I added entries and validated the idea through regular use, eventually using the app about 10 times a day.

Planning a trip often meant piecing together information from a dozen different places. I might save inspiration from Instagram Reels and carousels, bookmark useful links in my browser, receive booking confirmations as PDFs from different platforms, and have tickets spread across emails and travel apps. By the time the trip got closer, I had all the information I needed—but no easy way to see it together or turn it into a coherent plan. I recently started using an AI travel tool called Mindtrip to solve this. It’s free and brings my saved content, links, bookings, PDFs, and tickets into one place. Mindtrip uses AI to understand the context and organize everything into a single trip, including the tips and hacks in Instagram Reels. It then creates a day-by-day itinerary based on what I’ve saved, liked, and booked. I have one place to see, manage, and adjust my entire trip instead of constantly switching between different sources. It also provides reminders and checklists based on my plans, along with a map view of where I’m supposed to be going. Step-by-step: 1. I saved travel inspiration from Instagram Reels and carousels, bookmarked useful links, and collected booking confirmations, PDFs, and tickets from different platforms, emails, and travel apps. 2. I brought the saved content, links, bookings, PDFs, and tickets into Mindtrip. 3. Mindtrip used AI to understand the context and organize everything into a single trip, including tips and hacks from Instagram Reels. 4. I used the resulting day-by-day itinerary, based on what I had saved, liked, and booked. 5. I used Mindtrip’s reminders, checklists, and map view to manage and adjust the trip in one place.

I built a meal tracker where my only job is to photograph a plate and send it to an agent. Identification, portion estimates, macros, storage, corrections, and the weekly review happen without me. The part worth stealing isn't the food. The agent has its own email address and iMessage thread, so anything I can send from my phone becomes an input. I send a photo through whichever channel takes fewer taps. I send corrections as plain English with `CORRECTION` in the subject, and answer questions in the same thread. There’s no app and no form. Adding a channel took an afternoon and changed what the agent could be pointed at—the tracker is just one use of an agent you can talk to. It polls on a schedule instead of using a webhook because my laptop sleeps and a local gateway would be unavailable half the time. Storage is append-only JSONL. Corrections append a new record with the same ID using last-write-wins, so the stats layer sees one meal while the original estimate stays on disk. Every number can be traced back to the model’s first guess and my override. The accuracy mechanism is a challenge step. Every photo is estimated twice: first by the main model, then by a blind subagent that receives only the photo and the rubric—not the first answer. If it identifies different food, the entry is downgraded to low confidence and becomes a question for me. Testing before making the system autonomous caught bugs that otherwise would have failed silently. The API returns attachments under a different field than I had assumed, and only on the detail endpoint. As a result, a photo email was read as having no attachments, and every meal photo would have been dropped while the daily task logged a tidy “no new meals” and appeared healthy. The send path was separately broken, which would have killed the weekly review on a Sunday even with everything upstream working. A silent no-op that produces a plausible clean run is what this category of build is prone to. The bug that actually cost me was token usage: each blind challenge read used about 44,000 tokens, so a five-photo dinner cost roughly 220,000 tokens for one meal and capped my usage. The fixes, in order of effect, were to run the challenger on a cheap model, skip it once a named product or my confirmation has settled the entry, downscale photos for viewing, and republish the dashboard only when the data changes. Measuring first mattered—I would have blamed photo size, but that was the smaller half. The honest limits are important: calorie estimates from a photo are 20–25% off at best, identification error is a bigger risk than arithmetic error, and alcohol, water, and caffeine are never estimated from photos. The sequence in which I asked for things mattered more than any single instruction: Step-by-step: 1. I gave the goal and the one ingestion mechanic I was sure about, then insisted on an agreed plan before any code. Arguing about storage and failure modes is cheap before code is attached. 2. Before scheduling anything, I processed one real input end to end in front of me, including every outbound path. Inbound gets tested because I use it; the reply and the weekly digest do not. 3. When the agent reported something about my own input that I knew was wrong, I said so and made it re-check. Confidently wrong answers about things I witnessed were the cheapest bugs to find. 4. I asked for an independent second assessment of anything estimated rather than read, and decided up front what level of agreement was enough to accept the result. 5. I asked for a visible audit surface showing every field the agent claims to track, with a correction control on it. 6. I asked the agent to look up anything knowable rather than estimate it. A named product is a lookup; only the unnameable needs a guess. 7. I treated approval friction and token cost as requirements rather than complaints, and measured before changing anything. Almost every rule exists because something went wrong in ordinary use, not because it was designed up front. An agent I can email or text, which keeps records and answers back, is general-purpose; I’ve pointed it at one narrow job. What else would you point it at?

I use a Claude skill to reduce the manual work involved in my job search. It searches for the latest roles, assists with my applications, and tracks my application journey. I can fully automate the process with Claude scheduling. I download the SKILL file from my GitHub repository (https://github.com/petehawtree/job-search-tracker-skill) and launch it in Claude Desktop. Alternatively, I can download the entire repository and recreate it in my Claude skills directory. I schedule it to run each day or trigger it manually. Each run summarizes the latest activity and tracks it against previous runs. The workflow includes a dashboard for monitoring roles and applications, along with a daily digest that guides me through the new roles it finds. Step-by-step: 1. I download the SKILL file from https://github.com/petehawtree/job-search-tracker-skill. 2. I launch it in Claude Desktop, or download the entire repository and recreate it in my Claude skills directory. 3. I put the workflow on a schedule or trigger it manually each day. 4. I review the daily summary, which is tracked against previous runs. 5. I use the dashboard to monitor roles and applications. 6. I review the daily digest for guidance on the new roles the workflow finds.

I regularly come across long articles, reports, papers, ebooks, and other documents that I want to understand but realistically don’t have time to read closely. Instead of letting them pile up in a reading queue, I change the format and turn them into audio I can consume during time that would otherwise be less productive. Step-by-step: 1. I choose a long article, report, paper, ebook, or other document that I want to understand but don’t have time to read closely. 2. I upload it to Google Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) and add it as a source so NotebookLM can work directly from the material. 3. I generate an Audio Overview. NotebookLM turns the source into a conversational, podcast-style discussion that summarizes and explains the major ideas. 4. I listen while walking, driving, working out, doing chores, or running errands. 5. I follow up on what matters. After listening, I know the main ideas, what I want to investigate further, whether the document is worth reading in full, and which sections deserve closer attention. The result is essentially a personal podcast generated from whatever I need to learn. What I like about this workflow is that it doesn’t require me to find more time. It lets me use time I already have differently. Because the material is turned into a conversational discussion rather than simply being read aloud, I find it easier to stay engaged with dense material. I don’t treat the podcast as a replacement for reading the source when the details really matter. I use it as a comprehension and triage layer. Even when I eventually go back and read the original, I’m starting with a mental model of what’s in it rather than approaching it cold. The broader lesson is that AI doesn’t always need to save time by doing the work for you. Sometimes it can save time simply by changing the form of the work so it fits into your life.