A Week With Claude, The Numbers

In my role at the Linux Foundation I support quite a few open source projects. I have been using Claude more and more and decided to track my usage during a normal week. Here is what this past week looked like:

Many conversations spanned multiple categories, and the “quick fixes” were often mixed into longer working sessions.

Themes

First drafts When writing, the most valuable use case for me is generating first drafts of documents. In almost all cases they are reviewed and iterated on by me before passing on to attorneys, board members or colleagues. Claude handles the tedious work of reviewing background/previous work and suggesting options.

Context continuity matters. I am noticing that many tasks build on previous conversations from weeks or months ago. Asking Claude to reference past discussions about a charter amendment or a contract negotiation means I did not have to reexplain everything and reload state in my own brain first.

Small tasks add up. I use Claude a lot for trivial questions, date formating, simple errors like why is a markdown linter failing on a PR. Claude answers these faster than Google and keeps me focused on higher level work. .

Spreadsheet debugging. I work in a lot of spreadsheets, and debugging formulas is a lot easier in Claude. Formula troubleshooting in Google Sheets is tedious. Having Claude walk through SUMPRODUCT with YEAR() functions, or figure out why a date field is throwing errors, saves a lof ot time.

Automation scaffolding. I needed to build a Github action that processed Github Issues, created a HackMD agenda via API and ran on a schedule. This is where Claude Code really shines. Claude Code handled the boilerplate and edge cases while I focused on the logic. The time savings here is significant.

Failures

Claude Chrome I think Claude Chrome has great promise, but it’s not there yet. I tried to have Claude Chrome prep a board meeting deck. This is toil and low brain power work. The first time I tried, Claude blew through my account credits. The second time, Claude got stuck in a weird loop and kept crashing. It also put in the text “scroll_down” a few hundred times in one of my docs. I see promise here but it’s not ready for actual unsupervised work yet.

Claude Cowork Also not ready for prime time. I tried to have Claude Cowork rework a non-trivial spreadsheet. It tried to invoke Claude Chrome which caused a host of issues. Once I turned that off, it also got stuck in a loop and I received numerous “chats not found” where Claude’s work magically was deleted. This feels like a bug with the Mac Desktop App. Clearing cache etc seemed to help.

Day by Day

Monday: Planning and Contract Review

Started the week with my daily planning routine. I have a custom command that reviews my GitHub project board and prioritizes tasks with the no-nonesense personality of Joan Harris from Mad Men. It’s not life changing and not super usefule but I like having a second set of eyes on my todo list and its a fun way to start the week. She also reviews my completed work and congratulates me :)

A larger task ahead of me was reviewing a proposed revenue share partner contract expansion. I uploaded the existing agreement and a proposal document, and Claude identified scope mismatches and drafted amendment language. I then asked for a summary email to send to our attorney for proper legal review.

Tuesday: Spreadsheets and Technical Lookups

Restructured a membership tracking spreadsheet that had gotten unwieldy. Claude suggested separating concerns into distinct fields and using filtered views for different record types.

Also did quick technical lookups on tools I don’t use daily: understanding ticket types in Intercom, and deciding between code-first vs UI-first approaches for a CMS configuration. These were 5-minute conversations that would have been 20-minute or longer documentation research exercises.

Wednesday: Board Meeting Support

Reviewed draft board meeting minutes against a meeting transcript to catch gaps. Claude produced a suggestions document with “current text” and “suggested replacement” formatting, flagging missing details I’d overlooked or missed during the meeting.

Also drafted board resolution language for a charter amendment, pulling from previous conversations about the changes so I didn’t have to reexplain months of context.

Quick fixes scattered throughout: debugging a Mermaid diagram syntax error, fixing markdown linter warnings, a date calculation.

Thursday: Financial Tracking and Legal Questions

Worked on a payment tracking spreadsheet that needed year-over-year reporting and support for multiple partners. The formulas got tricky (extracting years from date fields, handling header rows in SUMPRODUCT), and Claude helped debug each issue as it came up.

Also formulated questions for our trademark team about a project contribution. Translated informal notes into a structured set of professional questions covering wordmarks, logo marks, and documentation requirements.

Friday: Reflection

Asked Claude to search through the week’s work and conversations and help me with background for this post.