Are you using AI to free time for higher value-work?

Not using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools is like insisting on doing complex calculations by hand instead of using Excel. AI can be a game-changer for enhancing productivity and efficiency in various tasks.

Until recently, I published this blog using a platform called Hugo. Last week, I migrated to Kirby, another publishing platform. Normally, migrating my over 800 articles to a new platform would have taken me a couple of days. However, with AI's assistance, the entire process was completed in just an hour.

Unlike platforms like WordPress that use databases, both Hugo and Kirby store articles as text files in folders. I find text files convenient as they ensure long-term preservation of content, easy storage, effortless backups, and seamless conversion to other formats.

However, Hugo and Kirby use different file formats and folder structures. I needed to convert Hugo files to Kirby's text format and create Kirby’s required directory structure for each article. There were also other minor details to address.

Manually performing this conversion would have been tedious and time-consuming. Writing some code to do the conversions is the logical step. However, instead of coding the scripts for the conversions myself, I turned to Claude.ai, an AI assistant, to write the scripts for me.

For example, this is one of the prompts I used:

Write a Python script that visits a directory and its subdirectories. When it finds a file named index.md, it opens the file, reads the TOML frontmatter between '+++', extracts the fields named 'slug' and 'date', and then renames the containing directory with the date in the YYYYMMDD format, followed by an underscore and the slug.

Claude.ai generated the base Python code, which I could tweak and run to process the 800+ files in seconds.

AI is a major productivity booster allowing you to focus on higer-value activities. Simply open a free account with Claude.ai or ChatGPT and start experimenting.