Scene hook
Last night at 10 p.m., I was still revising a client proposal.
I know that panic too well: the moment a client says, “Can we smooth out one more version tonight?”, my mind goes blank first. I’ve gotten stuck here myself. The most common mistake I made was forcing myself to write right away, and the more I wrote, the more scattered it got.
What this tool/method is + who’s already using it
This time I used a newly launched category of AI assistants: we can throw in the request, background materials, and rough spoken thoughts, and it helps organize them, draft, and fill in the structure first. It doesn’t make decisions for us. It feels more like an assistant who can still jump in and help in the middle of the night.
Last Wednesday night, outside a convenience store on Wantang Road in Hangzhou, A Ning, who runs Xiaohongshu accounts for clients, was holding an iced Americano while turning a client’s voice message into text and dropping it in. First he had it make an outline, then he rewrote that into something he could actually send to the client. I really relate to that scene. For small teams like ours, the problem usually isn’t ideas. It’s the first draft.
What it costs to replicate today
Money: starting from 0 RMB. Time: about 20 minutes to get through the first run. Technical barrier: if we can copy, paste, and type, that’s enough. No need to understand those English settings terms. I also used to dump too much into it at once, and the answer came back vague and floaty. Later I switched to “background first, goal second, constraints last,” and it got much better.
First step: after opening the webpage, click the input box in the middle and type the one thing you need to deliver today—for example, “Help me organize this into a client-facing proposal outline.”
Advice by stage
If we’re just getting started, I’d treat it like a “blank-page running mate”: use it first for outlines, pricing notes, and social post drafts. If we don’t try it right now, that’s fine too. Getting our service sold matters more first.
If we already have 1–2 clients, I’d use it for repetitive communication: organizing meeting notes, revising the third version of copy, turning voice messages into text we can actually send. The point is to pull ourselves out of the tiny messy tasks first.
If we’re scaling up, I’d put it into first drafts for content and internal collaboration. But before anything goes to a client, I’d still do one final pass myself for tone and facts. Not everyone needs it. But when we’re already working at 10 p.m., it really can catch us for a moment.