She built a Claude shopping assistant to stop buying cheap junk

1. 0:00 – 2:29

   Introduction to Nicole and AI-powered shopping

   1. NRNicole Ruiz0:00

      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.

   2. CVClaire Vo0:17

      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? 'Cause otherwise I'll just forget it.

   3. NRNicole Ruiz0:33

      Claude Cowork is great at this.

   4. CVClaire Vo0:34

      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 search and comes back and makes some recommendations of you to purchase. Everybody's like, "This lady's letting robots raise her kids," and I think it's just the total opposite of that.

   5. NRNicole Ruiz0:49

      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? [upbeat music]

   6. CVClaire Vo1:02

      Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, 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 gonna show us how she uses Claude to shop for everything. But not anything. She only wants high quality things that last, and she's using AI to make sure that the stuff that comes in her house is gonna 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 high quality items. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by Orkes, the company behind open source Conductor, which powers complex workflows and process orchestration for modern enterprise apps in agentic workflows. Legacy business process automation tools are breaking down. Siloed low-code platforms, outdated process management systems, and disconnected API management tools weren't built for today's AI-powered world. Orkes changes that. With Orkes 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: APIs, microservices, data pipelines, human-in-the-loop actions, and even autonomous agents. So build, test, and debug complex workflows with ease, all while maintaining enterprise-grade security, compliance, and observability. Orkes, orchestrate the future of work. Learn more and start building at orkes.io.

2. 2:29 – 4:55

   The problem

   1. CVClaire Vo2:30

      Nicole, I am excited to have you on How I AI because we are gonna 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.

   2. NRNicole Ruiz2:49

      I often am buying baby stuff. This is now our second baby. We're two 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 there are just other things that feel way more important until 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 lot in the household, but it takes a while to find the brands that you really 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 were 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 craftspeople. 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 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

3. 4:55 – 7:44

   Building a Claude Project for household purchasing

   1. NRNicole Ruiz4:55

      I decided to make this household management project in Claude here, where I started by just consolidating all of 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 craftspeople. People who had really, really high standards of makership, um, and had been around for several years. So why I did this is this project in and of itself is gonna hold a specific set of instructions. It's gonna 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 of the constr- all of the instructions that I have for this 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're 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 also had Claude just take straight from my 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 ways it should think about that. I also say we really wanna avoid trendy direct-to-consumer brands that I think are paying a lot for advertising and probably under-investing 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 surface 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. And also, any care and maintenance notes. So if I'm buying baby clothes but it says in a small thing, like, "Only hand wash this item your kid is gonna be wearing every day," I wanna know that. Maybe I'll make that decision, but I want that to be up front. 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 trustwor- 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 wanna know.

   2. CVClaire Vo7:43

      What I love about what you're

4. 7:44 – 10:30

   The “anti-to-do list” concept for reducing mental overhead

   1. CVClaire Vo7:44

      showing us here is, yes, this is How I AI, so of course, all these project instructions are in a Claude project and are gonna be used by this AI to surface great purchases for you. But this is also how 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 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 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? Like, can I get it delivered in the next week? 'Cause otherwise I'll just forget it. Can it be returned? Can I buy it 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 pur- purchase something. And sitting down and just taking the effort to say, like, my invisible checklist is now a visible checklist in a Claude project that I can use over and over and over again is just gonna, 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 Claude project.

   2. NRNicole Ruiz9:17

      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 gonna 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 Claude and more formally, um, really speeds up buying things that are very well vetted in a world where I think the internet is only gonna get more noisy around brands that are actually trustworthy. I also have a line about like, please try to suss out AI reviews. Please read a lot of reviews, but if it sounds like AI, don't listen to those reviews.

   3. CVClaire Vo10:18

      Absolutely.

   4. NRNicole Ruiz10:18

      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,

5. 10:30 – 15:53

   Shopping for a can opener: the system in action

   1. NRNicole Ruiz10:30

      like, quality indicators.

   2. CVClaire Vo10:31

      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 gonna 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 stuff in the wrong size. Like, it is everything from I bought a throw pillow in [laughs] 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 teeny tiny on the photos, but it was like, like actually a very petite chair. And so again, it may not be quality. It could be I always get the size wrong.

   3. NRNicole Ruiz11:06

      Yes.

   4. CVClaire Vo11:06

      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.

   5. NRNicole Ruiz11:14

      Yes.

   6. CVClaire Vo11:14

      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?

   7. NRNicole Ruiz11:24

      Yes.

   8. CVClaire Vo11:24

      And are we gonna get a better result out of it?

   9. NRNicole Ruiz11:27

      Let's start. So I have been looking for a can opener. Our can openers always 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 a lot of time composing your prompt.

   10. CVClaire Vo11:47

       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 the, in the market for a can opener 'cause 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 who comes to my house can't open it. But I also saw like cradle cap comb. I'm looking for one of those. A kind of nice looking soccer kit jersey because my kids will wear nothing but soccer kits, but they are atrocious in every way. [laughs]

   11. NRNicole Ruiz12:18

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CVClaire Vo12:18

       Like just-

   13. NRNicole Ruiz12:19

       Yes

   14. CVClaire Vo12:19

       ... an assault on the eyes.

   15. NRNicole Ruiz12:21

       Yes.

   16. CVClaire Vo12:21

       Um, so I, I am shopping for the exact same thing, so I'm, I'm really excited to see what this Claude project can do for me. But let's see what it got us from a can opener perspective.

   17. NRNicole Ruiz12:31

       So we've got a few 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 Nogent Superkem 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 gonna list much higher end 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 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 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. And so right off the bat, I'm interested in that. When I first searched this, it was clear-cut because there was two reviews for the same 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... 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 is ready to purchase. So it did actually find it on two different websites, Manufactum and Boston General Store. So I could immediately just purchase that and we're ready to go.

   18. CVClaire Vo14:29

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

   19. NRNicole Ruiz14:32

       I do generally when I can. Not all the time, especially not for clothing 'cause they 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. It 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 vendors that we really like.

   20. CVClaire Vo15:01

       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?

   21. NRNicole Ruiz15:08

       I've been working through this. I, I ... So I interviewed Jesse Genet, 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 to a spot where there's anything regular 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.

   22. CVClaire Vo15:40

       Yeah.

   23. NRNicole Ruiz15:40

       But I do wanna get there. I wanna try.

   24. CVClaire Vo15:42

       Yeah.

   25. NRNicole Ruiz15:42

       I know she has a flow for how she lets her agents go through Instacart, and I think, like, maybe Amazon as well. Um-

   26. CVClaire Vo15:50

       Yeah

   27. NRNicole Ruiz15:50

       ... so I know it, I know it's possible, but not

6. 15:53 – 18:45

   How AI helps century-old brands with terrible websites

   1. NRNicole Ruiz15:53

      yet. We're not there yet.

   2. CVClaire Vo15:53

      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, 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 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 wanna shop, which again, benefits these, like, smaller companies, not just these big companies. So when people think about AI, I just wanna say there are ways that AI can make small companies and individual creators and individual artisans, um, have, have a, a, a better time than, than a worse time.

   3. NRNicole Ruiz16:50

      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 you 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. [laughs] And so that adds a disadvantage to everyone else, especially Amazon.

   4. CVClaire Vo17:22

      We had, uh, Jason Levin on, on the podcast, and he just kept saying no u- no UX is the best UX. So if we can just pass over all those-

   5. NRNicole Ruiz17:30

      Yeah

   6. CVClaire Vo17:30

      ... terribly designed websites-

   7. NRNicole Ruiz17:31

      Exactly

   8. CVClaire Vo17:31

      ... and get to the thing we want, which is buying the product, um, everybody's happier. So just not even having to browse those is, is solving the problem for you.

   9. NRNicole Ruiz17:40

      Yes.

   10. CVClaire Vo17:41

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7. 18:45 – 25:06

   Processing returns with Claude Cowork

   1. CVClaire Vo18:47

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

   2. NRNicole Ruiz18:51

      Yeah. So to continue the shopping flow exactly. You've gotten the product to 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 you bought four 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 gonna do is I'm gonna go over into Claude Cowork over here because I want it to help me access my Gmail and a number of, of other things. I would often do this on my phone through Dispatch. So I'd take a picture of the item with my phone as I find it in my household, because otherwise I'm gonna forget to do it. I would pop it into 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 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, 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 Rafa's from the last six months. They've already worn through in 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 draft up the request for refund to J.Crew's customer service."

   3. CVClaire Vo20:27

      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 gonna return it." You're like, "These pants were supposed to hold up, and so I'm getting them re- I'm g- I'm getting what I was promised, which is a good set of, of kids' 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.

   4. NRNicole Ruiz20:52

      Totally. I think what I've often found is just that any time 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 Cowork's strength.

   5. CVClaire Vo21:26

      I also have to say, while Cowork is 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-

   6. NRNicole Ruiz21:40

      Yes

   7. CVClaire Vo21:40

      ... "I'm gonna 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, just results in like less waste, less junk. Like it's just, it's just way 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.

   8. NRNicole Ruiz22:16

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CVClaire Vo22:16

      And so you have made it both technically possible and practically less annoying.

   10. NRNicole Ruiz22:22

       Yeah.

   11. CVClaire Vo22:22

       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.

   12. NRNicole Ruiz22:29

       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 upfront that make it easier to like maintain that system for five 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 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 three 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 could jump backwards because there is some other things in the shopping query section where you can really drill down into like-

   13. CVClaire Vo23:16

       Sure

   14. NRNicole Ruiz23:17

       ... what is this brand known for? That I forgot about.

   15. CVClaire Vo23:19

       Let's, let's wrap this.

   16. NRNicole Ruiz23:20

       Yeah.

   17. CVClaire Vo23:21

       Yeah, and then let's look at that.

   18. NRNicole Ruiz23:22

       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 in the draft email. So basically, Claude helped me draft this email, which was great. They immediately mention all of the item numbers. They put, put it in the 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 compelling. Degree of deterioration is far beyond what I would expect from any garment at J.Crew's price point. And what I have learned from this process is that actually sometimes it is a manufacturing issue. Um, and the 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've bought from this brand. So sometimes they know there's a manufacturer'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 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 wereGood 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

8. 25:06 – 26:33

   Using gift cards strategically

   1. NRNicole Ruiz25:06

      related tasks.

   2. CVClaire Vo25:07

      I love it. Okay, tell me a little bit more about shopping, 'cause you said you wanted to show-

   3. NRNicole Ruiz25:11

      Yeah

   4. CVClaire Vo25:11

      ... a few other things.

   5. NRNicole Ruiz25:12

      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 wanna use or clear through from a certain brand, I might say, "I have $30 for L.L.Bean. What item should I purchase that aligns with my purchasing 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 continuously made the same way, this tote, for over 80 years. Perfect fit for heritage criteria." It'll compare against some other things. But I love this. "A team of craftspeople in Brunswick, Maine stitch between" [chuckles] "3,000, 3,500 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

9. 26:33 – 29:40

   Vetting brands

   1. NRNicole Ruiz26:33

      thing I might do, if you see sort of like a targeted ad, I saw this item on another website, but I really wanna know if it was gonna stand up well, 'cause 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 parse 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 websites and then wonder, like, is this just gonna be a drop-shipped item that doesn't even match any of the search criteria online?

   2. CVClaire Vo27:01

      Oh, no, it says do not add.

   3. NRNicole Ruiz27:03

      'Cause it looked nice. It looked super aligned with the type of thing I would buy. It's like all natural materials, which is great, but apparently they got a big investment a little bit ago, and they've been really trying to scale, and they've gotten some-

   4. CVClaire Vo27:17

      Private equity. [chuckles]

   5. NRNicole Ruiz27:18

      They've gotten some really bad reviews. Not that just private equity alone is, like, the end of the world. But often it can go in hand-in-hand with some scaling challenges, [chuckles] 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 there are reviews that the Glassdoor internal quality is disorganized. [chuckles] And so like-

   6. CVClaire Vo27:43

      Oh, no

   7. NRNicole Ruiz27:43

      ... yeah, all, like, all those things put together are 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 this business-

   8. CVClaire Vo27:54

      [laughs]

   9. NRNicole Ruiz27:54

      ... is quality? And there are a lot of different signals that it's not great. Again, they're spending a lot on marketing. They've, I pulled up elsewhere, I think, that they have a lot of influencer reviews, like a lot of the, um, can't remember for sure-

   10. CVClaire Vo28:09

       Got it

   11. NRNicole Ruiz28:09

       ... what's in here. But it'll be like, there's a lot of paid placements on influencer accounts. And I'll think, "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 gonna be this place. They say, you know, they're manufacturing all over the 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.

   12. CVClaire Vo28:35

       I wanna repeat for folks, 'cause this is such a, like, a powerful just shopping flow for high qual- Now I'm gonna have to, like, buy not Amazon crap. You're really making me feel bad about myself. [chuckles]

   13. NRNicole Ruiz28:44

       But it can also help you search through Amazon vendors, right? That's the other thing.

   14. CVClaire Vo28:47

       Yeah.

   15. NRNicole Ruiz28:47

       I think I just felt very motivated. I, I use Amazon a lot, 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 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 the same SKU. They just did away with 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-

   16. CVClaire Vo29:22

       Convenience

   17. NRNicole Ruiz29:22

       ... logistical feat, which is that sometimes-

   18. CVClaire Vo29:24

       Yeah

   19. NRNicole Ruiz29:24

       ... they just swap out items from 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 query, where I was like, I really don't know what's in 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.

   20. CVClaire Vo29:39

       Yeah.

   21. NRNicole Ruiz29:39

       So that got

10. 29:40 – 36:55

    Recap, lightning round, and final thoughts

    1. NRNicole Ruiz29:40

       me thinking.

    2. CVClaire Vo29:40

       Okay, so I'm gonna repeat for folks. You keep a list right now on your phone, but it's moved to Claude, Claude Chat, Claude Project, of brands that have multi-decade, 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 me 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 wanna stay under budget on something. Or I found a new brand and I wanna know if it aligns with these other brands that I've already decided are in line with what I wanna buy. And you use Claude to do that. So then the things that are coming into your tiny city apartment, and I appreciate it, I live in 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, [laughs] in the butt, which, which they do. Then what you do is you use, uh, Claude Cowork, which is connected more to your email and can search through your email as a source of truth, and 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 SKU. 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."

    3. NRNicole Ruiz31:17

       Yeah.

    4. CVClaire Vo31:18

       No big deal.

    5. NRNicole Ruiz31:19

       It's great.

    6. CVClaire Vo31:20

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

    7. NRNicole Ruiz31:25

       Yes, yes. Not for reviews, for just purchasing. The can opener was great. It was actually really funny 'cause the first time I did this, I showed my husband, and he was like, "That looks crazy. It looks like a crazy can opener," 'cause there's no handle. It's just, like, one really compact thing, which it surfaced 'cause we live in a small apartment. And it pulled up a video for me, and we watched the video, and he was skeptical. And now he was like, "Okay, we're just gonna try 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' duvets, 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 I'd constantly have to strip off the duvet cover and wash it 'cause I don't wanna do that. I don't wa- 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 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 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 wanna have to worry about it. I just wanna buy a shoe that I'm gonna pass down to all the kids that are beautiful and timeless. I don't want something silly. I just want the kid to look, like, refined, elegant, but in a timeless way. You know? Like, I, I just don't wanna think about it. That's kind of like my, the model as what we were talking about earlier.

    8. CVClaire Vo32:59

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

    9. NRNicole Ruiz33:03

       [laughs] American heritage. Claire, with the, with the-

    10. CVClaire Vo33:04

        Manufactured in Maine for over 80 years. [laughs]

    11. NRNicole Ruiz33:07

        Yeah, yeah. With the-

    12. CVClaire Vo33:08

        Yeah

    13. NRNicole Ruiz33:09

        ... a little d- you know, sometimes you got the, like, Higg influence. Sometimes you got, like, the Japanese influence 'cause 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.

    14. CVClaire Vo33:20

        Okay. So Nicole, this has been so, so fun, so helpful for all the parents out here. Everybody's gonna be shopping higher quality goods. I'm gonna ask you two lightning round questions. I'm gonna get you outta here. My first question is, just quick, how has this changed your relationship with parenting?

    15. NRNicole Ruiz33:37

        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 Claude Cowork is great at 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 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 were doing, you would be doing it more slowly and 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?

    16. CVClaire Vo34:39

        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.

    17. NRNicole Ruiz34:52

        I think when I'm talking to friends about using Claude, especially people who 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 al- people always underestimate the amount you can just be like, "You didn't do what I wanted you to do. [laughs] Why is that?" And sort of, like, get a little bit of feedback first. And again, like, as, 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 then say, "Please don't do that 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?"

    18. CVClaire Vo35:35

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

    19. NRNicole Ruiz35:40

        Yeah. You can find me on X @nwilliams030. 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 Substack if you want tips for doing 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 this whole debate.

    20. CVClaire Vo36:22

        I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining How I AI.

    21. NRNicole Ruiz36:25

        Amazing. Thank you for having me, Claire. [upbeat music]

    22. CVClaire Vo36:28

        Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe here on YouTube, or even better, leave us a comment with your thoughts. You can also find this podcast on Apple 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 howiaipod.com. See you next time.

Episode duration: 36:56