Ask HN: How do you use AI to get things done faster?

Besides using tools such as Copilot, how do you take advantage of AI to automate your work or to improve your efficiency?

Prompts:

- does this API design make sense?

- my team thinks __ is a good pattern, what are some cons?

- what’s a good name for a class that does x,y,z

- is this code snippet readable?

- write a bash script to automate this very tiny thing

- upload quickjs binary to the advanced data analysis model and ask it to micro benchmark a couple of approaches to the same thing

I have it write nearly all my code now. It's incredible at pushing out sys admin sorts of python scripts. The code is clear enough and if I see it doing something a little too complex, I can suggest a more simple solution and it just does it. Ridiculous.

I use copilot in vscode. It watches what I type and inline suggests the next line or code block based on what I’ve been doing and say a function name or the events I’ve not yet added listeners for. I hit tab to accept. It saves me at least 20% of the time i would spend typing and is insanely good.

I have copilotx conversation in vscode that is aware of my codebase and active file. I can quickly get up to speed with a new project or library by asking it where x is or how to do y in this library. Or generate a vega chart or json for this so I can see a real example of the structure. It’s very good at these tasks. But can be out of date with some libraries or thibgs outside of vscode world.

I also have chatgpt with plugins. This lets me ask it about current code as it can pull the latest version of a github repo or multiple repos, or specific versions, and has more structured responses so it performs much better than copilotx currently does at certain tasks. This all saves me days and weeks of thoroughly reading docs to get a direction and plan. Instead these ai point me in the right direction immediately.

I just got the new voice and browsing features in chatgpt. Yesterday I had a technical voice conversation with the voice from HER about how I wanted to architect a feature. I was at my blackboard talking through the implementation and edge cases and the voice pointed out several angles I hadn’t thought about and worked with me through solutions. I did this while my phone was on my desk without having to touch it for the whole conversation so I could stay deep in thought at the blackboard. This is wildly more efficient than talking with a human where I have the overhead of social dynamics and navigating their communication quirks.

I also used chat gpt 4 heavily over the last few months to set up my company asking it all kinds of corporate, tax, legal, banking, etc. advice. Everything it told me I double checked at the source on government websites and it was wildly helpful. Saved me lots of money on consultants, reading stuff, and pointed me in the right direction and let me think through weird edge cases. Now that I have access to browsing and voice this will get super charged when I have my next question.

Do you ever wonder why you're writing so many sys admin sorts of scripts? Maybe time to rethink your architecture ?