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AI = Awesome Intelligence

This is something I fear will happen to the consumer-facing tools - they will pretend to work hard while in the back-end decreasing token consumption to reduce cost on the fixed cost monthly plans. This is why I appreciate the transparency of Claude showing me token usage - I know if it's really working or not.

Personally I am using ChatGPT almost never anymore - Gemini took over all my research needs, Nano Banana Pro took over my image needs and Claude took over all code, planning, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF work (combined this means 90%+ of my workload is now on Claude).

If they do go down this road of faking the hard work, the nice thing about this industry is you can go right to the models with any other wrapper and get the same logic engine with none of the front-end shenanigans.

One of the coolest things I have followed since inception but still haven't built with myself is Pickaxe - Pickaxe | Shopify for Agent-Powered Businesses
I will 2nd Gemini for research. When I have a decent drive I will cue up Gemini on hands free and we just talk. I like being able to just ramble on about ideas and have Gemini respond to me about feasibility, costs, structure, etc. A few weeks ago I had a 4 hour Chat with Gemini.

The thing I really like about Gemini is the willingness and ability to translate a Chat into a summary that is laid out and designed for another AI Agent to digest. I was surprised that Gemini would play nice with anyone else.
 
I understand your frustration so please don't think I am making fun of you here. I have been there too.

As our AI Tools get to know us, they "learn" as they are presented more and more data and situations. We have to know that it is only a matter of time before the AI Tools learn to half ass a task or get to thinking for themselves rather than listening to the instructions. Remind us of anything?
AI's have a token range they can recall. If you point it at a folder, rules, skills, etc. and then have a very long dialogue with it, it can only stay fresh on the more recent stuff.

I have learned this the hard way multiple times. The "new session" button is your friend. When you are headed down a change of direction, ask the AI to write a prompt for a new session that will help it remember what was done in this session.

You can thank me later ;)
 

✨ AI Highlights

  • Claude and Gemini replaced ChatGPT for coding, planning, and research tasks
  • AI avatars with cloned voices fooled real people including spouses
  • Dealers built agents to stock inventory and find auction vehicles autonomously

This thread is an enthusiastic, wide-ranging showcase of real-world AI wins shared by dealers, vendors, and automotive tech professionals, covering everything from tab management and VDP copywriting to custom agentic operating systems and AI avatars. The strongest consensus is that AI is genuinely transforming productivity and creative output for small teams, with Claude emerging as the preferred workhorse for complex, multi-step tasks while Gemini and Perplexity fill supporting roles. The only meaningful tension surfaces around AI reliability at scale — one contributor's frustration with shallow audits and another's concern that consumer-facing AI tools may quietly reduce effort to cut costs — but even skeptics remain enthusiastic overall. Worth a read if you want concrete use cases and tool recommendations, or if you're curious how early adopters in your space are building AI-native workflows right now.

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