A few weeks ago I needed three things done for a project. Research the market. Build a spreadsheet of competitors. Draft an email to a potential partner.
Simple enough. But here is what actually happened.
I opened ChatGPT for the research. Got a solid answer. Copied it out. Opened Claude for the spreadsheet. Got the structure. Copied it out. Opened another session for the email draft. Got the copy. Copied it out.
Then I sat there with three tabs open and three outputs that did not know each other existed. I was the one reading the research, deciding what went into the spreadsheet, then summarizing both into the email draft. The tools handled the steps. I handled the coordination between them.
That is when it hit me. I was calling this a workflow, but what I was really doing was manual routing between isolated sessions. Every tool was smart on its own. None of them were connected.
The second thing I noticed: most of these tools hand you a wall of text and call it done. If I wanted a spreadsheet I had to rebuild it myself. If I wanted a PDF I had to export it myself. The chat answered the question. It did not produce the artifact.
I am interested in hearing how other people handle this gap.
Are you running a stack of custom GPTs and routing by hand? Using one assistant and eating the copy-paste tax? Something else?
Where does it break first for you?
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