How I use Artificial Intelligence (at the moment)
What works for me
Before you continue reading, let me quickly share two examples to illustrate the scope of workflows I am talking about.
Daily Personal Inflation Index. For years, I have been dreaming about a personal inflation tracker: a daily price tracker of 40-50 products. Think about prices in the supermarket, a local pub, a restaurant, hotel prices, train prices, tennis courts, coffee houses, flight fares, gas, heating, electricity, etc.
It took 3-4 hours to look up the products, set up the daily scraper (every day at 7:00 CET), set up the clusters and visualize it. It cost €0.00 in compute to develop and run it (free tiers cover 2,000 minutes of scraping time per month). You see the first four days in the chart below. (I will probably write a follow-up about the volatility of daily prices in a few months).
Changing addresses. I am moving to a new place in a few weeks and need to keep track of the organizations where I need to update the address. I went through my e-mails, uploaded the text and let the agent look up the process and write the e-mail drafts. That was basically just going through my e-mails and copying the content in the terminal or side bar (depending if you use Gemini or Claude). It was done in a few minutes. Below is the text for the Church Contribution Office.
My workflow
I started working on Artificial Intelligence in 2019 (with a book published by Routledge in 2022) and have tried many different tools over the years. Over time, I have moved from excel and word-files to formats such as json, csv or txt as they are much better suited for automation purposes.
With the launch of AI agents late last year, I have changed my workflow again. The underlying tool is VS Code (Antigravity is a similar and more user-friendly tool developed by Google for Gemini) and it has four big advantages:
You can create 50 files at once and the agent can change all of them at the same time (which is not possible if you use the browser-based version). That was always the bottleneck when you had to copy text back and forth.
You can select between the different models which are integrated. For example, I use Claude Opus 4.6 for the more complicated things and Gemini 3 Flash for the implementation. I rarely hit the limit with my €20 subscription.
You can connect it with Github and have a history of all changes you have ever made. Some call it the persistence layer, and it is certainly true.
You can deploy whatever you are doing instantly on the web, a static page or locally (the inflation tracker is one such example).
Short example
Let us look at a small example. Let us say that we are part of the canteen team in a Belgian ministry. You have received this e-mail and are part of the taskforce.
Subject: Project Kick-off: New Seasonal Menu Implementation | SPF Finances Canteen
From: Sophie Mertens hospitality@minfin-events.be
To: julien.dubois@minfin.fed.be; chef.luc@catering-pro.be; anke.visser@nutrition-advise.be; pierrot.legrand@minfin.fed.be; claire.dubois@local-farms.be
Dear Team,
It’s time to refresh our plates! Following the feedback from our internal staff survey, we are officially starting the “Healthy Brussels” project to introduce a new signature recipe and seasonal menu for the Ministry’s main canteen.
Tasting & Kick-off Meeting
Date: Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Time: 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM
Location: Kitchen Annex, Level -1 (North Tower, Brussels)
Dial-in (for remote updates): [meet.google.com/yum-test-food]
2. Project Scope
The goal is to design a signature “Ministry Bowl” that uses 100% local Belgian produce, fits within the €8.50 price point, and can be served to over 400 staff members daily.
3. Project Team (5 Attendees)
Name, Role, Responsibility
Julien Dubois, Staff Representative, Feedback & Quality Control
Chef Luc, Executive Chef, Recipe Creation & Kitchen Flow
Anke Visser, Nutritionist, Caloric & Macro-nutrient Balancing
Pierrot Legrand, Facilities Manager, Budgeting & Logistics
Claire Dubois, Supply Chain Lead, Sourcing from local Walloon/Flemish farms
4. Key Deliverables & Timeline
March 2, 2026: Final Ingredient List & Supplier Contracts signed.
March 9, 2026: Nutritional Labeling & Allergen Information complete.
March 16, 2026: “The Big Launch” – First service to the staff.
Looking forward to a delicious project!
Best regards,
Sophie Mertens Project Coordinator | SPF Finances Brussels
In a first step, I upload the e-mail in VS Code and ask Claude Opus 4.6 to set up a folder structure and write an implementation plan.
In a second step, I switch to a less expensive model (Gemini 3 Flash) and ask it to implement the steps outlined in the plan. That was all done in less than five minutes.
Obviously, it is just an example and in a real case you would add much more data and be more specific about the preferences. However, it shows the structure and what you get in a short time span.
Set-Up
If you want to set up it yourself, go to VS Code (or Antigravity), connect it with the large language model you are using (via extensions). In the best case, you also connect it with a free plan on Github.