How I Used ChatGPT Over A Long Weekend

When I tell people how great ChatGPT is (or substitute your favorite AI tool like Claude), the question I hear most often is: “But how do you actually use it?” It’s a great question because, as I explained in this blog post, working with large language models (LLMs) isn’t always intuitive and takes some practice to master. Rather than scrambling to come up with examples on the spot, I decided to document how I used ChatGPT over a four day weekend. While this list isn’t exhaustive or representative of every weekend, it’s a great starting point for anyone curious about what ChatGPT can do. You don’t have to read through every single use case, you may want to skim the post and dive into the ones that strike your fancy. If you aren’t a developer, by all means, skip the coding section. If you don’t need health advice, then scroll past how I’ve used ChatGPT to diagnose my medical issues. There is a wide array of use cases discussed, and I’m sure at least one of these AI-assisted workflows can improve your life. Coding Solving multiple complex coding challenges You’ll see the full results in Boutique 3.0, but I was thrilled with how ChatGPT’s o1 model helped me brainstorm, prototype, and build a feature inspired by Swift Data’s Relationships. This feature has been on my wish list for over a year, but I kept putting it off because of the complexity. Using ChatGPT as a pairing partner, I developed about 10 potential APIs for this feature in under an hour, and ultimately found one that I loved. ChatGPT then built a first version of the implementation, which got me 90% of the way there, requiring only minimal tweaks to fully align with my goals and preferences. I also turned to ChatGPT as a teaching aid to review and understand this pull request. This was a fix for a long-standing bug in Boutique, but I had a bit of a mental block when trying to understand how it resolved the issue. I asked ChatGPT to double-check my assumptions and explain what I was missing. Being a software developer is as much about understanding code as writing it, and having a tool to improve my comprehension has been invaluable. Building a simple app I've been dealing with a prolonged bout of tinnitus, and the only thing that seems to help is listening to specific nature sounds — like a mix of fire crackling and light rain. Unfortunately, the app I was using for this was buggy and frustrating to navigate. I realized I could build a better app in just 20-30 minutes with ChatGPT. So, I extracted the sounds from the app’s IPA file and let ChatGPT help me create a new, more functional app with a better interface. Did I absolutely need to build this? No. But it’s made my life a little easier during a tough time. > Sidenote: This is a perfect example of how software development is changing. The marginal cost of creating software has always been high, but with LLMs and the tools being built around them, it’s only getting lower. Developers should take note. Making bespoke apps on demand is already possible — and this kind of capability will continue to shape the future of the industry. Writing SQL queries for me I often need to analyze how people are using my app, Plinky, to better understand how I can build a product that truly helps them. To make informed, data-driven decisions, I needed to determine the ideal number of links users can save before encountering a paywall. To find the right number, I decided to look at the average and median number of links users save in their first day, first week, and first month. Writing queries for this type of analysis can be tedious, especially with complex database schemas. By providing ChatGPT with my database’s DDL (Data Definition Language), I gave it an accurate understanding of my database’s structure — without sharing any actual data. With that context, ChatGPT generated a useful SQL query in seconds, providing the insights I needed. What normally involves googling SQL syntax and some trial and error was effortless with ChatGPT. Automating tedious tasks Fixing annoyances with one-off Python scripts There are small tasks that annoy the heck out of me, but these days, I often ask ChatGPT to write a script to do them for me. The last script I generated was a command line tool that allows me to pass in a list of simulators I would like to keep available in Xcode, and then have simctl delete all the other simulators for me. This saved me time and hassle. Instead of scrolling through an endless list of unused simulators in Xcode (which get re-added after every update), I was able to quickly fix the problem without spending much time figuring out how to write the script myself. ChatGPT’s ability to generate functional code to solve tedious problems is something I’ll never get enough of. Transforming colors in a color palette While considering new color schemes for Plinky, I wanted to quickly prototype colors without having to spend too much time building out a full color palette. Below is the prompt I used to make this work. > I have four different shades of purple colors. > - Light Mode Normal Contrast: #8E44AD > - Dark Mode Normal Contrast: #9B59B6 > - Light Mode High Contrast: #AD68C9 > - Dark Mode High Contrast: #783A91 > I'm trying to replace this color in my color palette with a new shade of blue. The color is #8ECAE6, and I would like to use that for the Light Mode Normal Contrast option. Can you create the other three colors applying the same transformations that we used for our shades of purple? ChatGPT delivered exactly what I needed: four perfectly tinted shades of blue — #8ECAE6, #9BDFEF, #ADEEFF, #78C0CA — each with slight offsets applied for the respective color modes. It was much faster than if I had attempted to create a whole palette myself, which is important because now I was able to try out a bunch of color schemes and see if any of them fit my needs. Double-checking my work Verifying work I’ve done As a small business owner, I file quarterly taxes, well, every quarter. It’s a tedious task, and the cost of making a mistake is high. Nowadays, after copying data between spreadsheets as I usually do, I paste both the original and updated spreadsheets into ChatGPT and ask it to compare them. While I can’t guarantee ChatGPT catches everything, this highlights any differences or potential errors I might have missed. It has found mistakes before, and while I can’t guarantee it will always help, it’s still better than nothing. This quick check has become an important part of my workflow, giving me a little boost of confidence that I’m getting things right. Writing better copy I like to think I’m a pretty good writer, but I often struggle with microcopy. My penchant for illustrative language doesn’t translate very well to the concise, clear text needed in my apps — especially when it’s crucial to communicate information to users quickly. This is where ChatGPT has been a huge help. I’ll upload a screenshot of a screen I’ve built with my best attempt at writing good copy, and ask how I can make the copy more concise and direct. It was particularly useful during my recent redesign of Plinky’s onboarding messages. With ChatGPT’s suggestions, I’ve been able to fine-tune the language across my app and deliver a better experience for users. Research Music Discovery I have a pretty eclectic musical palate, and I’m always looking for new music to listen to. Apple Music and Spotify give you access to every artist, album, and song imaginable, but when I find something I like, what I want is more of that. Unfortunately, their discovery features aren’t great — you either browse endlessly or let an algorithm recommend music until something catches your ear. This weekend, I was listening to Chad Hugo, and all I could think was, “Damn, this slaps.” I ended up having a whole conversation with ChatGPT about him, asking about who he’s worked with, his musical influences, and for more interesting things I should know about him. Then I asked: “Name five other artists I should check out if I like Chad Hugo.” ChatGPT suggested Pharrell, Daft Punk, Timbaland, The Chemical Brothers, and Mark Ronson. I’ve listened to a bunch of music by three of those artists, and agreed they were spot-on for my taste. That gave me confidence to check out the other two, and led me to discover a bunch of new music I’m now excited to listen to. Identifying a bird on my fire escape My lil cat loves watching birds, and while she’s not the most successful hunter (the window hurts), she remains fascinated and convinced she’ll get them one day. I noticed a bird on my fire escape that definitely wasn't a pigeon, and was curious about what bird had such a beautiful speckled chest. With just one photo ChatGPT was able to correctly identify the bird as a European Starling, which it turns out is a lot more common in New York City than I expected. Note: I did a Google Image search to confirm that the bird was indeed a European Starling, but wouldn’t have known where to start if I hadn’t asked ChatGPT in the first place. Answering menu questions I was out at a restaurant, and the menu contained a handful of items I was unfamiliar with. I wanted to find out what they were and if they sounded good, so while I could have googled each item individually, instead I took a picture of the menu and asked ChatGPT about three dishes at once. Asking about the causes of poor coordination I was walking down the street when I had a random thought: what causes some people to have poor coordination? I decided to ask ChatGPT: > What causes a person to have poor coordination? Is it usually neurological, biomechanical, or something else entirely?” The response was very insightful and sparked even more questions. ChatGPT explained various causes, including neurological issues, muscle imbalances, and even inner-ear problems. Each answer led to new questions, and before I knew it, I’d spent 10 minutes learning how