AI for everything besides coding

Posted on Oct 28 • Originally published at christine-seeman.com

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.

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

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 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 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.

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.

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.