Learn · Ideas and Usage
What AI does well with buying — and how to take it up a level.
Assist With Buying (AWB) gives your AI long-term memory, room for thousands of purchases, prices and sightings, one place for your preferences, and an organization it can navigate. Change AI models or subscriptions whenever you like — all of it comes with you.
Things AI is great at → Take it up a level
Things AI is great at
Take it up a level
Remembering what you told it.
Within a conversation your AI holds everything — what you said, what it found, where you landed.
AWB remembers across every conversation, every model, every subscription. Nothing important lives in a chat you'd have to go find again — it's in your AWB records, and every idea below builds on that.
Understanding what you actually need.
Share your Mission — a chair for a small office, a car for two dogs and a long commute — and your AI asks the right questions, turns it into requirements and tells you which ones matter most.
Hundreds of requirements across dozens of buying missions, all saved in AWB and all reusable. The doorway, the dogs, the commute, the ceiling height, the budget you set in March — your AI picks up whichever ones matter this time, on a purchase you started a year ago or one you started this morning.
Going and looking for you.
Some AIs can browse. Point one at a marketplace, a nursery, a classifieds board or a shop's site and it will work through the listings and report what's there.
It logs what it finds instead of describing it once: every listing saved in AWB as an Item with its price, photo, condition and source, ready to filter, sort and compare. Send it back next week and the new sweep joins the old one rather than replacing it.
Explaining a product in plain language.
Specs, materials, model numbers, what "stabilized turquoise" or "Volkameriana rootstock" means — your AI turns jargon into something you can decide with.
AWB keeps what you learn about a Type of thing with that Type, so the tenth lemon tree or bolo tie starts from everything the first nine taught you.
Comparing options side by side.
Give it a few candidates and it lays out the trade-offs, flags the deal-breakers and recommends one with reasons.
Comparisons run to dozens or hundreds of candidates, gathered over weeks, without anything falling out of memory. Keep them as an AWB list you can reopen — the ones you passed on stay on it, with why.
Judging whether a price is fair.
Your AI can look up going rates, weigh condition and delivery, and tell you whether an asking price is high, low or about right.
AWB saves every price it sees with its date and source, so fairness is judged against your own growing history — what this sold for last spring, what you paid last time — not just today's search.
Spotting a good deal.
It notices when an offer is unusually low, when a bundle beats buying separately, when refurbished is the smarter buy.
It can keep watching, because AWB holds the history. Hundreds of listings across months, remembered and compared, so a real drop stands out from noise.
Reading receipts and photos.
Photograph a receipt, a tag, a label or the thing itself and your AI pulls out the prices, quantities, brands and details.
Those details land in an AWB purchase history and a photo record you can search years later — what you paid, where, how often, and what it looked like.
Writing you a list.
Ask for a Costco run, a camping kit, gift ideas, things to never buy again — your AI writes a good list and helps you work through it.
Keep as many AWB lists as you like, each with its own purpose, notes and stores: reusable trip lists with a history of every run, wish lists you can share a view of, avoid lists, shortlists pulled from a Mission. One thing can sit on several lists for different reasons, and your AI can read and update any of them.
Planning a shopping trip.
Tell it what you need and it groups by store, suggests substitutes, keeps you inside a budget and turns a jumble into an order of stops.
The plan improves every time: your usual and backup stores are on the AWB list, and what actually got bought last run is on the record before the next one is planned.
Suggesting gifts.
Give it a person, an occasion and a budget and it comes back with thoughtful ideas and reasons.
AWB keeps gift lists per person and per occasion, with budgets and what you already gave — and a chosen view can be shared with the people who need it, never the rest of your account.
Learning your taste.
Over a conversation your AI picks up what you like and don't, and its suggestions get better.
Your preferences live in one AWB place, in your own words, with scope and history — and any AI you connect reads them at the start of every session. A pattern it infers is labelled as inferred until you adopt it.
Sticking with a long decision.
A big purchase takes weeks. Your AI can build a plan, research in rounds, revise its view and keep the thread.
AWB runs many long decisions at once, each with its own budget, criteria, evidence, lists and progress, never mixed up — and picked up again by a different AI if you switch.
A few things you might be wondering
If my AI is already good at this, why use Assist With Buying?
Because the work becomes more useful when you can keep building on it. Your AI can research and reason with you; Assist With Buying gives the resulting purchases, prices, notes, Lists and Missions a shared home you can inspect and update. It can bring the relevant records into the next task, even when you choose a different AI.
Can I use the AI I already like?
Assist With Buying is designed for AI apps and agents that can connect to its remote MCP server and complete account sign-in in your own browser. MCP is the connection that lets your AI work with information and tools from other services. No particular product is named as supported here, because naming one is a promise, and it needs that client's whole connection lifecycle proved in its own environment. How to connect your AI has the server address, the setup steps and the connection details.
Do I have to organize everything before I start?
Start with one shopping trip, a list, a photo or something you're considering. Your AI can help organize it as you go. An Item can stand on its own; a Mission is there when you want to keep a larger buying effort together.
What should I share after a shopping trip?
A receipt or a list of purchases is a useful start. Include prices, quantities and where you shopped when you know them. Add anything that explains your choices: “Only bought this brand because it was on sale,” or “Worth paying more because it's easier to clean.” That gives your AI more to work with next time.
Can my AI build a much bigger price picture than a few recommendations?
Yes. You can ask your AI to research dozens or hundreds of offers when its tools and access support that work. Assist With Buying is designed to keep the dated observations and show the patterns by Place, brand and condition. The record keeps different kinds of evidence distinguishable, so an asking price doesn't quietly become a price someone paid.
What kinds of Lists can I make?
Anything useful to you: Costco staples, things to buy every month, wish lists, gifts, camping supplies, things you bought last month or products you'd avoid. Each List has its own purpose and notes. An Item can be on several Lists for different reasons, and reusable shopping Lists can start fresh for another trip.
Can I keep lots of Missions going at once?
Yes. Use separate Missions for separate goals, each with its own criteria, options, research and progress. Your AI can focus on the relevant Mission while reusing useful knowledge from your broader history. Assist With Buying keeps the work organized; your chosen AI carries out the research.
What happens if I switch AI subscriptions?
The records you've saved in Assist With Buying remain in your account. Connect another compatible AI and let it use the context you choose. You don't have to rebuild your Lists or purchase history because you changed assistants, and a full archive of every outside chat isn't created automatically. Portable export is available from the private Library. You can also delete your whole account yourself with Delete everything on Connect your AI, which offers the export first.
Does buying something tell my AI that I loved it?
A purchase says what happened. Your notes explain how you felt and what mattered. You might buy something because it was available quickly, or reject an offer because of shipping. Assist With Buying keeps that context, and AI-inferred preferences remain visible and correctable.
Does what I write in Buying Preferences change what my AI is allowed to do?
No. Those are guidance — how you like to work and what stays true about your buying. Permission is separate. When you sign in from your AI and click Allow, that is the approval, and it grants everything at once: read your Missions, save research, work your Queue, open your captured photos and attach new ones. Nothing is held back for later, and that includes adding to the shared public Places directory, only ever as a short privacy-scrubbed note it can later withdraw. An authorized AI can read the preferences you marked readable and save a change you explicitly ask for, as a new version in its name; a pattern it infers stays a proposal until you adopt it. Nothing written there moves money, buys anything, or overrides what you say in the moment. Your AI access page is where access is granted, narrowed and reviewed.
Can I share a useful List without sharing everything else?
Choose the list view you want to share and preview it first. Your private notes, preferences and other Lists stay private unless you deliberately include particular information. A recipient can use the shared view without joining your whole account.