She built a Claude shopping assistant to stop buying cheap junk

The modern world is just rife with online administrative tasks where parents become the human link between all of these really, really hard to navigate systems that where you're

constantly just doing these small tasks, returns, purchasing, navigating help, emails, and all this different stuff. I

totally have the mental overload of having to buy something for my kids or my family or myself and then going through this kind of invisible checklist of like, is it made of a natural fiber?

Is it sourced locally? Can I get it delivered in the next week cuz otherwise I'll just forget it.

Claude co-workers created this. Every

time you need to go buy something, you're like, "Hey, project. I need to buy this thing. Go make me recommendations." Claude does the web

recommendations." Claude does the web search and comes back and makes some recommendations of you to purchase.

Everybody's like, "This lady is letting robots raise their kids." And I think it's just the total opposite of that.

Why would you not automate the administrative work so that you can spend more time with your kids and your family and the people around you rather than the digital systems that our life is [music] made of navigating?

Welcome back to how I AI. I'm Claire,

product leader and AI obsessive here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today I have Nicole Ruiz and she's going to show us how she uses Claude to shop for everything,

[music] but not anything. She only wants highquality things that last and she's using AI to make sure that the stuff that comes in her house is going to last for 100 years. I love her tips and tricks and this is a really useful one

for all the parents out there trying to keep their kids in highquality items. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by Orcus, the company behind Opensource Conductor, which powers

complex workflows and process orchestration for modern enterprise apps in Aentic Workflows. Legacy business

process automation tools are breaking down. Siloed low code platforms,

down. Siloed low code platforms, outdated process management systems, and disconnected API management tools weren't built for today's AI powered world. Orcus changes that. [music] With

world. Orcus changes that. [music] With

Orcus Conductor, you get a modern orchestration layer that scales with high reliability and brings humans, AI, and systems together in real time. It's

not just about tasks. It's about

orchestrating everything. [music]

APIs, microservices, data pipelines, human in the loop actions, and even autonomous agents. So build, [music]

autonomous agents. So build, [music] test, and debug complex workflows with ease, all while maintaining enterprisegrade security, compliance, and observability. Orcus, orchestrate

and observability. Orcus, orchestrate the future of work. Learn more and start building at orcus.io.

Nicole, I am excited to have you on How I AI because we are going to talk about something we have not in an entire year of the podcast talked about yet, which

is how to buy better with AI. Tell me

about the problem that you were having as a very busy mom. I often am buying baby stuff. This is now our second baby.

baby stuff. This is now our second baby.

We're 2 months in and I think every parent knows the feeling of needing some sort of tool, some sort of item, some sort of clothing and being so panicked and stressed and they're just other things that feel way more important. And

so you put the thing in your Amazon cart and you click purchase and then later you realize you really didn't want that version of the thing. You did not want the crappy plastic version. you didn't

want the like brightly colored version or honestly it was just like made poorly or even more recently we've seen that like Amazon was sending stuff from from basically knockoff brands and so you also don't want that for your children.

You don't want like random products made by a third party seller. So I was thinking about this and how I could get more items in our home that were specifically thoughtfully made that were made of natural materials which I think

is a big trend right now broadly and also things that we could mend and take care of. We've been trying to do this a

care of. We've been trying to do this a lot in the household, but it takes a while to find the brands that you really like. It takes a while to find brands

like. It takes a while to find brands that will actually take returns, which you need to do a lot as a parent as well if something doesn't fit what you're looking for. And so often when I'm

looking for. And so often when I'm starting a query online, I would just realize a ton of these were paid ads, which has been a problem for forever. A

ton of these are so highly indexed on your specific keyword and so they're selling this one product. And that's not really what you want either. you really

want either an incredibly trustworthy brand that has a history of like extraordinary craftsmanship or maybe you specifically want to support small brands and artisans and crafts people

and I also had that problem as well where I would have a website from like the farmers market by our house but I wouldn't remember the one thing that they sold that I wanted to buy and so when the time actually comes to buy the

nice knit sweater that was handmade like you don't remember where that website is or how to find that person and so at the moment I had this long apple notes list of like here's who I would go to for a

sweater. Here's who I would go to for

sweater. Here's who I would go to for like a wooden comb. But again, I needed something between like the huge Amazon query center of all those shops and all

of those providers and the tiny tiny website that is inevitably impossible to search. And so I decided to make this

search. And so I decided to make this household management project in Claude here where I started by just consolidating all these shops. The shops

that I ground level absolutely trusted, they had a history of either vetting their vendors very very highly or they themselves were people who were directly employing like crafts people, people had

really really high standards of makership um and had been around for several years. So why I did this is this

several years. So why I did this is this project in and of itself is going to hold a specific set of instruction. It's

going to hold specific memory. And so if I'm asking about buying something more broadly outside of this context, I don't necessarily want Claude to actually overfit to all the constru all the

instructions that I have for this project. And this just helps me keep

project. And this just helps me keep this set of instructions and this memory of all of my purchasing separate from all of my other queries because I think it just keeps it organized. Basically, I

say first of all, go through this list and I give it the criteria of how I chose these lists where all of the things that I mentioned. There's decades

of the business. They've been sought out um for this product for a long time and that they are made to last and repair.

I've also found that Claude is very good at surfacing whether or not a brand stands behind return policies. If things

are made poorly, if your kid wears through them really quickly, who will actually take those returns and take them quickly and easily? So, I have this long list of brands here, which I also had Claude just take straight from my

Apple Notes. I dumped it in and asked it

Apple Notes. I dumped it in and asked it to help me organize this. Down here, I also just have some other quick rules, which are that once it gets through that list, it should look for another

preferred vendor. It has a few different

preferred vendor. It has a few different ways it should think about that. I also

say we really want to avoid trendy direct to consumer brands that I think are paying a lot for advertising and probably underinvesting in quality. And

I also talk a little bit about formatting the results that they get uh for each item that I'm searching for. So

I want it to specifically surface the name of the product. I want it to surface a photo. I want it to service price and then the materials that it's made out of because often I'll see something that's really nice and then

down exceptionally low is that it's made mostly out of plastic and so I want that up front and center. Then also any care and maintenance notes. So, if I'm buying baby clothes, but it says in a small thing like only handwash this item your

kid is going to be wearing every day, I want to know that. Maybe I'll make that decision, but I want that to be upfront.

A link to the purchasable item. And then

again, a brief note on why the brand has a trustworthy history. That is the part I love the most, the trustworth trustworthy history. Even yesterday, I

trustworthy history. Even yesterday, I put something into Claude and it basically surfaced that this brand got taken over two years ago and ever since then all the reviews have been abysmal.

Before then, it was great. Now, it's

not. don't buy from them. And that's so helpful. That's exactly what I want to

helpful. That's exactly what I want to know.

What I love about what you're showing us here is yes, this is how I AI. So, of

course, all these project instructions are in a clawed project and are going to be used by this AI to surface great purchases for you. But this is also how I life. And so, just quick pause for

I life. And so, just quick pause for folks like keeping a list of vendors that you really like or think are high quality. And then also just writing down

quality. And then also just writing down how you make purchasing decisions. And I

call this sort of like the anti-to-do list. It's one of the things that should

list. It's one of the things that should be on people's personal anti-to-do list, which is I totally have the mental over overload of having to buy something for my kids or my family or myself. And then

going through this kind of invisible checklist of like, is it made of a natural fiber? Is it sourced locally?

natural fiber? Is it sourced locally?

Like, can I get it delivered in the next week because otherwise I'll just forget it. Can it be returned? Can I buy it

it. Can it be returned? Can I buy it resale? which is also something I see in

resale? which is also something I see in in your prompt. And this is sort of like this invisible checklist that I go through every time I b p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p purchase something.

And sitting down and just taking the effort to say like my invisible checklist is now a visible checklist in a clawed project that I can use over and over and over again is just going to like reduce the mental overhead of this

task little by little. And it happens probably multiple times a day, at least multiple times a week. And so just the general concept of doing this, even if it's not purchasing things, but it's

something else in your household that requires two or three checks of quality or process or whatever it might be, it's a great use case for something like a

claw project. Totally. And I think this

claw project. Totally. And I think this came out of noticing that I was doing a lot of household maintenance of items that were bought more poorly than I wanted them to be. And so I thought, why don't I just try to move as much of the

setting upstream as possible? I really,

we live in Brooklyn. We live in an apartment that is space constrained and so whenever we're buying something I want it to be something that's going to stand the test of time so I don't have to maintain it more later or if I do that there's a very simple policy to

send it back to the manufacturer and make sure they'll stand behind that and that they'll also be behind that product for multiple decades. I also for a long time had a notion of all the items that I was purchasing because I was starting

to write reviews of like did this stand up did it get holes in it immediately.

And so just being able to track this through quad and more formally um really speeds up buying things that are very well vetted in a world where I think the internet is only going to get more noisy around brands that are actually

trustworthy. I also have a line about

trustworthy. I also have a line about like please try to sus out AI reviews.

Please read a lot of reviews, but if it sounds like AI, don't listen to those reviews. Please try to guess whether or

reviews. Please try to guess whether or not this brand is a drop shipping brand.

Just a lot of the modern shopping internet pitfalls that happen. Like,

let's try to avoid those as quickly as possible and sort through from the noise to the actual like quality indicators.

While you're going to the next step, I have to laugh about another use case people might think of, which is I have this pile of returns, and I know we're going to get to returns in a minute, so everybody hold your horses. But I have a

pile of returns for very specific reasons. And it's because I always buy

reasons. And it's because I always buy stuff in the wrong size. Like it is everything from I bought a throw pillow in the wrong size for my pillow to like I accidentally bought a outdoor patio

furniture set that's like teeny tiny. It

did not look teenytiny on the photos, but it was like like actually a very petite chair. And so again, it may not

petite chair. And so again, it may not be quality. It could be I always get the

be quality. It could be I always get the size wrong. So, like make sure I

size wrong. So, like make sure I understand the size of what I'm buying or remember when I'm buying shoes for my kids, they run a half size large and so like look at size guides and and stuff

like that I think is really really interesting and helpful just to build yourself a little checklist. But

let's see this thing in in action. So,

what would you buy and are we going to get a better result out of it?

Let's start. So, I have been looking for a can opener. Our can openers always break. I think nobody knows how to

break. I think nobody knows how to design a can opener. So, let's just say, "Help me find a can opener." And I think one of the good things about this also is just that all of your context, right, are in those project instructions

already. And so, you don't have to spend

already. And so, you don't have to spend a lot of time composing your prompt.

This is really funny for folks that didn't see your screen. I feel like you and I are the same person because we we're not in in the market for a can opener cuz ours works, but it is impossible to understand how to use. It

is like a very advanced can opener in a non-standard design. and everybody comes to my house

design. and everybody comes to my house cannot open it. But I also saw like cradle cap comb. I'm looking for one of those. Uh kind of nice looking soccer

those. Uh kind of nice looking soccer kit jersey because my kids will wear nothing but soccer kits, but they are atrocious in every like just an assault

on the eyes. Yes.

Um so I I am shopping for the exact same thing. So I'm I'm really excited to see

thing. So I'm I'm really excited to see what this cla project can do for me. But

let's see what it got us from a can opener perspective. So, we've got a few

opener perspective. So, we've got a few pictures. Right away, you can see that

pictures. Right away, you can see that these two pictures are either exactly the same or something very similar. So,

you can tell right off the bat it's searching through Boston General Store, which I love because they're a store that vets vendors. They go, they test out all the products for you and then they put them in a website. So, it's

like layers of work just done. They're

testing these brands. They've tested the product actually works. That's amazing.

They're searching through that site for me so I don't have to do that. They're

looking at some other sites right away.

they come up with this Noent Superkim can opener, which is great. They have

the price front and center, also great because the other thing I've been most stunned about this is a lot of websites that I would think are going to list much higherend things end up listing

items that are like target prices. So,

it really is just making it easier to shop for a quality thing for the same price range, which I value really highly. It's actually changed since the

highly. It's actually changed since the last time I did the query. The first

time I did the query, I came up with two results for this first can opener here.

I forget the other store that carried it. So, right away I was like, you can

it. So, right away I was like, you can see this brand was established almost 100 years ago. They're known for specifically doing a lot of products

like this. Um, and it has great reviews.

like this. Um, and it has great reviews.

And so, right off the bat, I'm interested in that. When I first searched this, it was clearcut because there was two reviews for the same place. Something that I might do is

place. Something that I might do is like, are there any downsides in the reviews you see on the websites? And you

can sort of dig into the things you might be worried about and keep prompting and it'll just search sort of the whole internet landscape for you, which again just super nice when you're a mom who doesn't have a lot of time or you don't really care about spending so

much time to browse the internet but would you would like a nice thing and so it'll just do that for you and you can come back to it and sort of just make a choice and then we'll go to the website

here. It's ready to purchase. So it did

here. It's ready to purchase. So it did actually find it on two different websites manufact store. So, I could immediately just

store. So, I could immediately just purchase that and we're ready to go.

Do you go back and tell it what you ended up buying?

I do generally when I can. Not all the time, especially not for clothing because I haven't perfected the clothing buying processing process yet. Partially

because of what you're talking about, which is sizing. I'm trying to get it to understand sizing very cohesively in our household and is helpful for going through the website size guides, which are often not standard to the sort of

like general international sizing. But

yeah, I try to tell it what I buy and it definitely gets definitely improves over time. It will sometimes surface new

time. It will sometimes surface new vendors that we really like.

Do you feel like you could get to a point where you would let this shop for you or do you still like to be in the middle of it?

I've been working to this. I I so I interviewed Jesse Jane who you had on your podcast a while ago about her broader sort of theory of technology in the household and then a bit ago I like

responded to one of her tweets about really wanting to standardize my Costco order and a few other really regular household orders. I haven't quite gotten

household orders. I haven't quite gotten to a spot where there's anything regular enough. I think it'll take a little bit

enough. I think it'll take a little bit more of an iteration like you're saying to have that full cohesive project instruction to let it buy for me, but I do want to get there.

I want to try. I know she has a flow for how she lets a go through Instacart and I think like maybe Amazon as well. Um,

so I know it I know it's possible, but not yet. We're not there. What I love

not yet. We're not there. What I love about what you're showing here is, you know, people are really apprehensive about AI and artisans and creatives and all this stuff, but if you look at

something like this, this is a way for kind of like smaller creator, you know, smaller artisans, smaller shops to get in front of larger audiences or to make

it easier for you to access those because again, like the the like infrastructure of Amazon is very helpful, right? We've got the app. It

helpful, right? We've got the app. It

has everything. I press one button. I

have reviews. And so even if you can approximate that here, it's really nice to just make it easier to shop the way you want to shop, which again benefits these like smaller

companies, not just these big companies.

So when people think about AI, I just want to say there are ways that AI can make small companies and individual creators and individual artisans um have have a a better time than than a worse

time. I will add one other thing which

time. I will add one other thing which is just that like even disproportionately I would say like some of the oldest manufacturers of quality items their websites are the worst

websites and so it actually takes disproportionately longer to purchase from those brands and that's when I started realizing like oh this could be a great force leveler essentially for people who are still doing the thing

they've been doing for 100 years but maybe they haven't hired a new web designer in the last decade and so that adds disadvantage to everyone else, especially Amazon.

We had uh Jason Leven on on the podcast and he was just kept saying, "No, no UX is the best UX." So, if we can just pass over all those terribly designed websites and get to the thing we want,

which is buying the product, um, everybody's happier. So, just not even

everybody's happier. So, just not even having to browse those is is solving the problem for you.

Yes.

This episode is brought to you by Metaview because who says hiring has to be fair? [music] Every founder, hiring

be fair? [music] Every founder, hiring manager, and recruiter I speak with feels the same pressure. Hire the right people as fast as possible. But

recruiting is brutally timeconuming.

Alignment is hard. And the competition for great talent keeps getting tougher.

That's why teams [music] like Riot Games, Brex, GitLab, and Replet, plus 5,000 other organizations use MeteView, the Agentic recruiting platform, giving

high performance teams an unfair [music] advantage in hiring. It works by giving you a suite of AI agents that behave like recruiting co-workers, finding candidates based on your exact criteria,

[music] taking interview notes, reviewing every inbound application, gathering insights across your hiring process, and helping you identify the best candidates in your pipeline. Don't

let your competitors out hire you. Metav

customers close roles 30% faster. Get

started with Metaview today and get your first 100 candidates sourced for free at metaview.ai/howi.

metaview.ai/howi.

Okay, let's talk about what happens when a product fails us.

Yeah. So, to continue the shopping flow, exactly. You've gotten the product to

exactly. You've gotten the product to your home. Maybe it actually does not

your home. Maybe it actually does not hold up to standards. I think if you have kids, you often see this loop sped run. Basically, you see that the garment

run. Basically, you see that the garment you bought 4 months ago that you thought would be great for really intense outdoor play does not stand up to your your expectations, especially if you did

want to invest in a more quality item.

Essentially, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go over to Claude Co over here because I want it to help me access my Gmail and a number of other things. I

would often do this on my phone through dispatch. So, I take a picture of the

dispatch. So, I take a picture of the item with my phone as I find it in my household because otherwise I'm going to forget to do it. I would pop it into dispatch. In this case, we have this

dispatch. In this case, we have this picture of J Crew pants that immediately wore through the butt. So, I'm sending them back. In reality, I would press

them back. In reality, I would press Whisper Flow on my laptop because I'm often doing something with other hands.

It's just a lot easier to talk to the laptop. I might even be nursing a baby.

laptop. I might even be nursing a baby.

So, this has been a game changer to be able to just talk out loud. So, I'd say something like, "I have this pair of pants of raw fuzz from the last 6 months. They've already worn through in

months. They've already worn through in the butt. I'm looking to return them to

the butt. I'm looking to return them to J Crew and specifically get a refund.

Can you help me draft an email and specifically start out by finding the receipt for the pants in my email either

from PayPal or J Crew with the item number and any other details you might need. Please include that context and

need. Please include that context and draft up the request for refund to J.

Cruz customer service. So again, life hack here, which is you're not like, "Oh, J Crew says that I can return it in 30 days, so I'm going to return it."

You're like, "These pants were supposed to hold up and so I'm getting them. I'm I'm getting what I was

getting them. I'm I'm getting what I was promised, which is a good set of of kids pants." And so you're basically bringing

pants." And so you're basically bringing together the information you have in your email to go pursue that refund, which would be very like annoying to do otherwise.

Totally. I think what I've often found is just that anytime where there is like finding an email that is stuck in some website like I know everybody has their refund policy or their customer service

email listed somewhere but it's hard to find and I'm doing it like at least five times a month if not more. If it's just lowering the impetus to get starting on this started on this like 5 to 10 minute

task, that's really helpful to me. Even

if I don't take the email as it was drafted, helpful to get started and sort of like clear through some of the grunt work of navigating websites, which is

Claude Co's strength. I also have to say while co-workers running, I appreciate your commitment to just having like high quality things that last because so many

people would again because of the friction involved just like toss the pants and be like I'm going to get new pants and move on with their life. And

again like figuring out how you can consume less by focusing on quality, getting AI to take away the toil of having only high quality things in your

house. I think ultimately like again

house. I think ultimately like again just results in like less waste, less junk. Like it's just it's just way

junk. Like it's just it's just way better. And I do think the ability for a

better. And I do think the ability for a consumer to hold sort of a a a company to account on their quality promises is

again like something that's technically possible but practically annoying. And

so you have made it both technically possible and practically less annoying, which it is is I'm sure just changing your life in terms of how you can manage

the stuff that's in your house.

Definitely. Yeah. I think it's it's a big priority of ours and especially we would love to have a lot of children and so I keep thinking I was like what things can I do up front that make it

easier to like maintain that system for 5 years and I think a lot of it is just like buying quality items I don't have to maintain. I think that used to be

to maintain. I think that used to be much more normal, but we now have again the noise of drop shipping, the noise of like plastic quickly manufactured clothing that are like these direct to consumer brands that explode and then

they die out in 3 years. And so trying to just like shove all of that to the side and get to the like, okay, what is the brand that has the strongest history

here? Maybe actually I don't maybe you

here? Maybe actually I don't maybe you could jump backwards because there is some other things in the shopping query section where you can really drill down into like

Sure. Is this brand known for

Sure. Is this brand known for let's wrap this. Yeah. And then let's look at that.

Yeah. We pulled all the details. We've

got the size. We've got item number.

We've got the order number and when I originally purchased the item, which is helpful. So it'll put all of that detail

helpful. So it'll put all of that detail in the draft email. So, basically,

Claude helped me draft this email, which was great. They immediately mention all

was great. They immediately mention all the item numbers. They put put it in the header. They do all of the relevant

header. They do all of the relevant things that will make the person immediately email me back with a yes or a no rather than a query for more information. And they make it sound

information. And they make it sound compelling.

Degree of deterioration is far beyond what I would expect from any garment at J Cruz price point. And what I have learned from this process is that actually sometimes it is a manufacturing issue. Um, and first time I pulled this

issue. Um, and first time I pulled this up that what they actually said is that when you look, it'll go and look at the URL of the item itself and a lot of people are saying the review on the website like this item had poor quality,

like more so than any other year of this item, more so than anything else I bought from this brand. So sometimes

they know there's a manufacturers's issue and they're just kind of waiting for you to be like, "This was not up to par." And they're like, "Oh yeah, you're

par." And they're like, "Oh yeah, you're so right. um you were paying attention

so right. um you were paying attention and we're happy to give you a refund if not like something even better to make up your time and hope that you purchase from the brand again. So click send that

email super easy. Did that from my phone as I was walking through the house like tidying up super super fast. It just

drafted it from me for me. I reviewed it and we were good to go. So I'll often do that for this. I'll do that for returns.

I'll have it pull up all the sort of relevant return information for a given vendor and will tell me what I need to input and I'll just tell it that and again it'll draft any info I need or

it'll just email me the QR code or the receipt or whatever and that just clears through like another five minutes of administrative online purchasing related tasks.

I love it. Okay, tell me a little bit more about shopping because you said you wanted to show a few other things. So,

one other thing that I might do that's related is if you have a gift card or a certain amount of money that you might want to use or clear through from a certain brand, I might say, "I have

$30 for LLBAN.

What item should I purchase that align with my purchasing criteria?"

criteria?" And again, you can you can really drill down on all the things you're looking for when you start a purchase query.

Normally, I start very broad to get an idea of what's out there. But you could say, I want it to be easy to maintain, and that will help it a lot. You could

say, I want it to be $30 or more, but not over $100. Like, all of those things just make it much easier to shop when you have this like set of values. So,

sometimes it'll surface these items. What I've also found is that it'll bring up from a given store some of the most classic items, which I really appreciate. American retail has been

appreciate. American retail has been continuously made the same way. This

tote for over 80 years. Perfect fit for heritage criteria. It'll compare against

heritage criteria. It'll compare against some other things. But I love this. A

team of crafts people in Brunswick, Maine stitch between three 3500 and 4,000 totes a day. That's so great.

That's exactly what I want. These people

have been doing this for forever. like

this really really sounds like it'll stand up to what I need. So the other thing I might do if you see sort of like a targeted ad saw this item on another website but I really wanted to know if it was going to stand up well cuz I hope

to use this for a long time. So I might say what's your analysis of this brand?

Are they legitimate? Sometimes it can be really hard to press from the website. I

had like clicked into the about section of the website. There was not a lot to read. So, I often I'll get those

read. So, I often I'll get those websites and then wonder like is this just going to be a drop shipped item that doesn't even match any of the search criteria online.

Oh, no. It says do not add cuz it looked nice. It looked super aligned with the type of thing I would buy. It's like all natural materials

buy. It's like all natural materials which is great, but apparently they got an in big investment a little bit ago and they've been really trying to scale and they've got private equity.

They've gotten some really bad reviews.

It's not that just private equity alone is like the end of the world, but often it can go in handinhand with some scaling challenges, I think. And so,

yeah, it's not actually that old. And I

liked that it specifically brought up somewhere like it had like there's controversy over the CEO's management and their reviews that the glass door internal quality is disorganized

and yeah, all like all those things put together, the type of thing like I used to work in venture capital, I used to invest in startups. So part of it is me just thinking about like how what are the signals we can get on whether or not

it's quality and there are a lot of different signals that it's not great.

Again, they're spending a lot on marketing. They pulled up elsewhere. I

marketing. They pulled up elsewhere. I

think that they have a lot of influencer reviews like a lot of the um can't remember for sure here, but it'll be like there's a lot of paid placements on influencer accounts and like okay good

to know that might not be exactly the brand that I'm looking for. So that can be really helpful too to just know like anytime I want kids clothes, I'll go to these three websites and it's not going to be this place. They say, you know, they're manufacturing all over the

world. Again, not the end of the world,

world. Again, not the end of the world, but like maybe just a minor mark against the brand in terms of being like somebody who is making with the same manufacturer for a very long time. I

want to repeat for this is such a like a powerful just shopping flow for high quality. Now I'm going to have to like

quality. Now I'm going to have to like buy not Amazon crap. You're really

making me feel bad about myself.

But it can also help you search through Amazon vendors, right? That's the other thing I think I just felt very motivated. I I use Amazon Amazon a lot

motivated. I I use Amazon Amazon a lot still, but I don't know if you followed recently that there actually was this big. For a long time, you could buy

big. For a long time, you could buy makeup and you would get like a knockoff brand of makeup even though you're purchasing you're clicking purchase for an item that is from the actual brand

because Amazon had this policy where in warehouses they would switch items with this item SKU. They just did away with this. But I think it just goes to show

this. But I think it just goes to show like the types of things you're maybe like giving up for Amazon doing this very logistical feat which is that sometimes they just swap out items from

other companies. So that I was like

other companies. So that I was like can't buy makeup from them. That's

really frustrating. And then it made me think about other forms of queer wear. I

was like I really don't know what's in here. I'm not truly a like remove all

here. I'm not truly a like remove all plastic person but it is just hard to maintain plastic and it's easier to maintain other things. So back on me.

Okay. So I'm going to repeat for folks.

You keep a list right now on your phone, but it's moved to Claude Claude chat cla project of brands that have multi-deade if not centuries long heritage that are

created the way that you like them by artisans that are trusted that are ethically sourced or made of natural materials or just generally high quality that you're happy with. You've put that in a project. Every time you need to go

buy something, you're like, "Hey, project, I need to buy this thing. Go

make new recommendations." Claude does the like web search and comes back and makes some recommendations of you to purchase. You

also take a couple different angles on that which is I need to purchase something in this price range maybe because you have a gift card or you just want to stay under budget on something or I found a new brand and I want to

know if it aligns with these other brands that I've already decided are in line with what I want to buy and you use cloud to do that. So then the things that coming in to your tiny city apartment and I appreciate it. I live in

San Francisco. I have a tiny San

San Francisco. I have a tiny San Francisco house are high quality, easy to maintain and then if they fail to hold up and the corduroy pants get a

hole in the in the butt, which which they do, then what you do is you use uh Claude Co-work, which is connected more to your email and can search through

your email as a source of truth. Say, go

find the product that I bought from this picture and the manufacturer. Find the

details. Find the price. Find the item name and skew. Draft an email to the manufacturer requesting a refund with all the details plus the picture. Send

it off from your phone. And then you're good to go.

Yeah.

No big deal.

It's great.

Are there a couple products that have gone through this process that you just really love? We'll put them in the show

really love? We'll put them in the show notes.

Yes. Yes. Not for reviews, for just purchasing. The canon opener was great.

purchasing. The canon opener was great.

It was actually really funny because the first time I did this, I showed my husband and he was like, "That looks crazy. Looks like a crazy can opener

crazy. Looks like a crazy can opener because there's no handle. It's just

like one really compact thing, which it serviced in a small apartment." And it pulled up a video for me and we watched the video and he was skeptical and I was like, "Okay, we're just going to try it." And he loves the can opener. So,

it." And he loves the can opener. So,

huge hit. Um, it's a bit of a weird design, but it's a great product and it stands the test of time. I got a toddler crib blanket the other day because there

are a lot of baby blankets which are one measurement to your point earlier about trying to find the right size thing and there are a lot of kids duvet which are huge and not multi-seasonal but I wanted

something that fit a toddler bed but was not a whole duvet system so that it constantly have to strip off the duvet cover and wash it cuz I don't want to do that. I don't have the time for that.

that. I don't have the time for that.

And so it surfaced a few toddler sized quilts that were like handmade items, very reasonably priced from a great brand. And again, it's just lower

brand. And again, it's just lower maintenance, but an item I could mend because I've been doing a lot of mending, and that partially inspired this as well, but it would not be complicated to mend. And so that was great. Trying to think of anything else

great. Trying to think of anything else that I've bought from them. I often use them to purchase toddler shoes because I find a lot of kids shoes are just horribly made. And again, I don't want

horribly made. And again, I don't want to have to worry about it. I just want to buy a shoe that I'm going to pass down to all the kids that are beautiful and timeless. I don't want something

and timeless. I don't want something silly. I just want the kid to look like

silly. I just want the kid to look like refined, elegant, but in a timeless way, you know, like I I just don't want to think about it. That's kind of like my the model as what we're talking about earlier.

You're just raising American Heritage kids, you know?

American Heritage with the manufactured in Maine for over 80.

Yeah. Yeah. With the Yeah. a little, you know, sometimes you got the like hig influence, sometimes you got like the Japanese influence because I feel like Brooklyn has a lot of that. So sometimes

every now and then I'll be like, "Okay, these are like my stylistic influences too and we put that in and that helps."

Okay, so Nicole, this has been so so fun, so helpful for all the parents out here. Everybody's going to be shopping

here. Everybody's going to be shopping higher quality goods. I'm going to ask you two lightning round questions. I'm

going to get you out of here. My first

question is just quick. How has this changed your

just quick. How has this changed your relationship with parenting?

The modern world is just rife with online administrative tasks where parents become the human link between all of these really really hard to navigate systems that where you're

constantly just doing these like small tasks returns purchasing navigating like help emails and all this different stuff. And so Cloud Co-work is great at

stuff. And so Cloud Co-work is great at this. And I would say it makes you able

this. And I would say it makes you able to do the more human parts of parenting, which are interacting with your kids while you automate some of the busy work, which is like just doing returns

online. And I think I like that order

online. And I think I like that order and organization of things because you're not replacing an activity that would be do done face to face. You're

getting rid of sort of like an email job type thing that you would be doing anyways, but you would doing you would be doing it more slowly and ineffectively. Um, so why would you not

ineffectively. Um, so why would you not automate the administrative work so that you can spend more time with your kids and your family and the people around you rather than the digital systems that

our life is made of navigating?

My last question for you and then we'll get you back back to your your little ones is when Claude's really not doing its job, what is your prompting technique and do you yell? And I think this is very important because it's a

reflection on how people parent. I think

when I'm talking to friends about using Claude because I think people are first using it, they'll be like, "Claude did not do what I wanted it to do. What do I do next?" And I think you people always

do next?" And I think you people always underestimate the amount you can just be like, "You didn't do what I wanted you to do. Why is that?" And sort of like

to do. Why is that?" And sort of like get a little bit of feedback first. And

again, like as you've talked with a lot of the people on your show about, like it is often like managing an employee.

And so understanding where they're coming from, giving them a little bit of space to explain so that you understand when what went wrong can be very helpful to them and say, "Please don't do that again. Here's the new criteria and here

again. Here's the new criteria and here are the new guidelines." But also, you can just be really really honest and say, "That was not what I wanted at all.

I think you misunderstood. Where did we go wrong here?"

Perfect. Love it. Well, Nicole, where can we find you and how can we be helpful?

Yeah, you can find me on xen Williams30.

You can also find me on Substack. I

write an interview series about how technology is changing the household and it's specifically meant for people who are looking to be ambitious in their household life, in their community life,

in their family life, but even if you don't have kids or you are not married, talking about being ambitious in the realm of the household and the community more broadly. So you can subscribe to my

more broadly. So you can subscribe to my Substack if you want tips for doing that. We talk a lot about integration of

that. We talk a lot about integration of AI in the household. How we should do it, how we shouldn't do it, the ways people are doing it, the way people don't like, how other people are doing it. So, it's a it's a live forum for

it. So, it's a it's a live forum for this whole debate. I love it. Well,

thank you so much for joining How I AI.

Amazing. Thank you for having me, Claire.

Thanks so much for watching. If you

enjoyed this show, please like and subscribe here on YouTube or even better, leave us a comment with your thoughts. You can also find this podcast

thoughts. You can also find this podcast on Apple [music] Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Please

consider leaving us a rating and review, which will help others find the show.

You can see all our episodes and learn more about the show at howiipod.com.

See you next time.