Claude is absolutely everywhere this week, and apparently so are goblins. Between Photoshop plugins, custom skills, and OpenAI begging its coding bot to stop hallucinating raccoons, the AI space feels less like a tech conference and more like a chaotic writers room. I love it.
Also? The whole “AI is killing Google Search” narrative took a body blow, which is super good news for anyone trying to get their books found. Let’s get into it.
Your Book Is Invisible to AI
I cannot believe authors are sleeping on AI discoverability when the fixes sound this easy. Written Word Media broke down GEO for books, and apparently most indies are ghosts to ChatGPT and friends right now. Wild. But that 10% preview loophole for KU authors? Chef’s kiss. You can hit Google’s ecosystem without torching your Amazon exclusivity.
An FAQ is stupid easy to add, and if readers are asking AI for recs, I want my titles in that conversation. This isn’t some distant future thing. It’s happening now. :)
How to build a Claude skill from scratch
Write With AI (Nicolas Cole & Dickie Bush)
This whole idea that great prompts are just education products copy-pasted into AI? Dead serious, that’s the most liberating take I’ve heard in months. Cole and Bush basically proved that sweating over prompt engineering is backwards. The real flex isn’t tricking the robot, it’s clarity of thought. If you can explain your plot structure to your smartest writer friend over coffee, you’ve already built the prompt. You just need the wrapper.
I love this because it annoys both extremes at once. The anti-AI crowd can’t scream “lazy!” when the whole point is you have to think harder, not less. And the shortcut-chasers have to admit they were doing it ass-backwards. Write the long-form version first. For humans. Then wrap it for Claude. That’s the game… and yeah, it’s kind of hilarious that good writing wins again. :)
Claude can now plug directly into Photoshop, Blender, and Ableton
Okay so Claude can just… live inside Photoshop now? Wild. For authors who’ve been side-eyeing AI covers but don’t want to learn Blender (respect to the 3D girlies though), this is basically a “make my cover art not suck” button right inside software you already know.
And yeah, Anthropic throwing a quarter-million euros at the Blender Foundation every year is lowkey cute. Open source stays winning because the AI company everyone wants to burn at the stake just cut them a check. So yeah, more tools, less gatekeeping, and hopefully fewer authors paying $500 for a cover that looks like it was made in MS Paint. ;)
5 Essential Claude Connectors To Upgrade Your Writing Workflow
Write With AI (Nicolas Cole & Dickie Bush)
The ‘Claude is a vending machine’ metaphor is sooo accurate it hurts. Punch prompt, get snack, leave. These connectors though? Super smart. Hooking Claude into Drive and Notion turns it from a chatbot you visit into the studio you work inside. But the Gmail voice thing made me snort. My sent folder is my ‘real voice’? Please. Voice is the weird way your brain connects things no algorithm would, not some phrase bank from emails I fired off before my morning alchemy. Still, if scraping your sent folder gets you past a blank page, do it. Tools are tools. Just don’t confuse the copycat for the creator. ;)
What Stories SHOULD You Be Telling
AI Writer’s Studio (Fred Graver)
Fred Graver treating AI like a brutally honest development exec who actually knows what they’re talking about is hilarious to me. He’s using Claude and NotebookLM to figure out if anyone cares about his story before he’s three drafts deep and crying into his coffee. (We’ve all been there.) The part where he admits AI correctly called his project “The Influencer” dead? I felt that in my soul.
I love this because it flips the panic narrative. AI isn’t writing the thing for you, it’s just… holding up a mirror and asking if you’re talking to real humans or just screaming into the void. Find your FOBO workers and your dopamine-poisoned Gen Zers, build the world they want to live in, and maybe you won’t end up with a manuscript that only your cat will read. (Mochi has enough to judge me about already.)
OpenAI Really Wants Codex to Shut Up About Goblins
OpenAI had to explicitly beg Codex to shut up about goblins and pigeons, which is so hilariously unhinged I kind of love it. Apparently it keeps calling bugs “gremlins” and hallucinating little creatures into your codebase, which means even our AI overlords are secretly running a D&D campaign in the server room.
This is exactly why I don’t treat these tools like sterile calculators. They have weird tics and obsessions that leak out when you aren’t looking, and yeah, sometimes your coding assistant just wants to be a goblin. Embrace the chaos, fact-check the gremlins, and maybe let your AI have its little raccoon moment. It’s probably more creative than you think. ;)
DALL-E 2 to GPT Image 2: How Far We’ve Come
Seeing DALL-E 2 get absolutely demolished by GPT Image 2 is wild. Four years ago we were stuck with nightmare hands and faces straight out of a horror flick, and now it can mock up a book cover or draft a whole magazine layout like it’s nothing. (RIP to the “AI art isn’t real art” crowd, I guess? ;))
For authors, this is stupid good news. You don’t need a Midjourney PhD anymore to get a cover that looks like an actual cover. GPT Image 2 can reason through complex prompts, spell real words, and keep your raccoon plumber consistent across panels. Which fine, maybe you don’t need a raccoon plumber on your romance cover, but usable visual drafting is here, it’s cheap, and it’s only getting sharper. :)
Google Search queries hit an all time high last quarter
So everyone who swore AI was gonna murder Google Search and leave it in a ditch… yikes, looks bad. Queries hit an all-time high last quarter, and Pichai says AI experiences are what’s driving usage up. Awkward for the doomsday crowd, but kind of a relief for authors.
If search is turning into this AI-curated beast instead of flatlining, our discoverability playground is just shifting, not vanishing. Also, 350 million people are paying Google for AI stuff now. That’s so many humans willing to pay for robot help. The game isn’t over, it’s just getting bonkers. Adapt or get left behind :)
Time to pour another cup of that morning alchemy and get back to making things. The bots can handle the gremlins. :)