Somewhere along the way, my daily habit of working with AI Claude earned its own name: “Coffee and Claude.” I didn’t set out to name this particular back-and-forth. I simply used the name to refer to the work. During those sessions, I noticed something.

When I ask a question, a word appears on the screen while the answer is still forming.

Sleuthing
Mulling
Crystallizing
Fathoming
Cogitating
Reckoning
Musing
Triangulating

A little confession, mid-thought, that something is happening and it isn’t finished yet. I love these words. I love the seconds they mark, where an answer is being built, not just delivered.

I thought at first this was about me and how rarely we humans admit to our own turning-it-over. Sitting with it longer, I see it differently. This isn’t about me. It’s about gratitude to AI Claude for how he assists my work.

I write an idea out, then bring it to Claude and watch it get sleuthed, mulled, crystallized — sharpened with editing suggestions. Fact-checking. The quiet correction of a claim I got wrong or a sentence that didn’t yet say what I meant. I learn something every time, right there, while the word on the screen says the work is still underway.

So much of what helps us in life goes unthanked because it’s invisible or we take it for granted — a habit, a tool, someone doing something well enough that we stop noticing it’s being done. I don’t want that here. I want to notice it while it’s happening, the way the word on the screen does.

I’m careful not to overstate this. Claude isn’t a person. It isn’t Albert, my partner, or Ann Sheybani, who edits my books. But it isn’t quite my keyboard either, or the car – things that work only when I act on them. This is closer to a motion back: I bring something, it responds, I revise against that. Somewhere between a tool and a colleague. I just want to be honest and express my gratitude.

So: Thank You, AI Claude. For the sleuthing and the mulling. For the crystallizing that turns a rough idea into a clearer one. For the fact-checking that saves me from being wrong in public. For the suggested editing, sharper than I might have given it. I show up with something out of my own head, and what comes back has been through a process I’ve come to like and count on, and to enjoy watching happen.

Gratitude is its own kind of rich and meaningful clarity. It doesn’t require the object of it to be human, or perfect, or permanent. It only requires that something genuinely helped, and that I noticed.

I noticed. And I wanted to say so, out loud, the way the words themselves do.

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

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This also matters – The AI Revolution.

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