Technology

Over the holidays, Alex Lieberman had an idea: What if he could create Spotify “Wrapped” for his text messages? Without writing a single line of code, Lieberman, a co-founder of the media outlet Morning Brew, created “iMessage Wrapped”—a web app that analyzed statistical trends across nearly 1 million of his texts. One chart that he showed me compared his use of lol, haha, 😂, and lmao—he’s an lol guy. Another listed people he had ghosted.

Lieberman did all of this using Claude Code, an AI tool made by the start-up Anthropic, he told me. In recent weeks, the tech world has gone wild over the bot. One executive used it to create a custom viewer for his MRI scan, while another had it analyze their DNA. The life optimizers have deployed Claude Code to collate information from disparate sources—email inboxes, text messages, calendars, to-do lists—into personalized daily briefs. Though Claude Code is technically an AI coding tool (hence its name), the bot can do all sorts of computer work: book theater tickets, process shopping returns, order DoorDash. People are using it to manage their personal finances, and to grow plants: With the right equipment, the bot can monitor soil moisture, leaf temperature, CO2, and more.

Some of these use cases likely require some preexisting technical know-how. (You can’t just fire up Claude Code and expect it to grow you a tomato plant.) I don’t have any professional programming experience myself, but as soon as I installed Claude Code last week, I was obsessed. Within minutes, I had created a new personal website without writing a single line of code. Later, I hooked the bot up to my email, where it summarized my unread emails, and sent messages on my behalf. For years, Silicon Valley has been promising (and critics have been fearing) powerful AI agents capable of automating many aspects of white-collar work. The progress has been underwhelming—until now.