Last week, I was updating the knowledgebase that powers one of our internal AIs. AI had found answers that had drifted out of date, checked them against current sources and given me a CSV containing 87 proposed changes.
So there I was, squinting at a spreadsheet. Everything I needed was there, yet it was hard to see what had changed and make a decision quickly.
Then I had a “hang on a minute” moment.
I sent this message.
Can you turn these proposed updates into HTML cards, or something else that makes them easier to review? It’s hard to understand the before-and-after changes properly in CSV format.
That was literally the whole prompt.
A few minutes later, I had this.
It created a single HTML file that opened in my browser. The answers sat side by side, with removed text in red and additions in green. I could filter, search, accept, edit, skip and download my decisions as a new CSV.
It also saved my progress in the browser, which became useful when 87 changes turned out to be quite a lot of changes.
My specification contained one sentence: “Make this easier to review”. The AI made a decent set of product decisions by itself.
Throwaway software
This is a category of AI use I’m finding increasingly useful. You can ask for an answer or some analysis. You can ALSO ask it to create the environment that makes the next part of the job easier - effectively, throwaway personal software.
That might be a tiny dashboard, a calculator, a simulator, review cards or a form that turns decisions into structured data. The artefact can be extremely specific to one task and one person. Cheap, temporary software has become practical.
Make the review easier to do
The same idea helps when someone else needs to review my work.
I could send a colleague 87 spreadsheet rows to annotate. I could also give them one card at a time, show the changes clearly, let them click a decision and keep a visible progress count. I’m pretty confident which one would make it to the top of their to-do list.
The interface is part of the work. A review that feels obvious and slightly satisfying is more likely to get finished, and the feedback is likely to be cleaner too.
Now, whenever I find myself fighting with the format of a task, I pause before accepting the annoyance.
If you’re squinting at a CSV, clicking between documents or trying to get someone to review something boring, ask AI to make you a small artefact first.
You might only use it once… and that’s fine.