A friend asked me last week: "so do you actually use AI for your freelance work, or is that just LinkedIn talk?"
Honest answer: yes, but not for the things the LinkedIn posts claim.
What I don't use AI for
- Writing the actual code (the fun part)
- Making architectural decisions (the part that requires judgment)
- Communicating with clients (the part that requires trust)
- Pricing my work (the part that requires understanding what I bring)
What I DO use AI for
- First drafts of boring things. Status emails. Internal docs. README files. The things that are necessary but not interesting.
- Code review for stuff I already wrote. "Find the bug in this 50-line function I just wrote" gets an answer in 5 seconds. Faster than testing it.
- Translating English specs into test cases. Client says "users should be able to filter by date range" — I paste that to the AI and get back 5 test scenarios.
- Refactoring that I'm too lazy to do by hand. "Find all the places in this file where I'm doing the same thing 3 different ways." Usually 80% right, 20% I clean up.
- Summarizing long things. A 4000-line legacy codebase? "Tell me what each module does." Saves an afternoon.
What's different from "just use AI"
The pattern that doesn't work: hand the AI the task, take the output, ship it. That works for code golf, not for production systems.
The pattern that works: I have a question, the AI helps me think it through, I make the call, the AI drafts the output, I review and edit. AI is the sparring partner, not the contractor.
If you're starting out
Don't start with "AI will 10x my freelance income." Start with "what part of my week do I hate, and could AI make that 80% less painful?"
For me that was: client emails, code review, and test writing. AI made those 80% less painful. My income didn't 10x but my hours-per-billable-hour dropped by ~30%.
The 118 prompts I actually use: https://gobvan.gumroad.com/l/wypos ($9 — discounted from $19). Free 10-prompt sampler: https://gobvan.gumroad.com/l/skzza.
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