Here's what I'd try this week.
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Hear the hard part first
We all face hard talks. At work, it's asking for a raise or telling a client your fee is going up. At home, it's asking your parents what they'll pay for the wedding, or asking your roommate to keep it down at night.
Most of us practice these in our head. In our head, the other person always says yes. Then the real person says "the budget is frozen," and we say sorry and take a smaller deal.
Next week I'm opening Stand-In. The AI you already use plays the other person, and it won't give in until you give it a good reason. So you walk into the real talk calm, because you already heard the hard part.
What trips you up most in a hard talk?
Pick one, then tell me in a comment which talk is coming up for you. Your answers decide which talks I add next.
I may share your comment, without your name.
🍄 Turn a doodle into a looping GIF and a saved character
You want a fun picture for a post or a birthday message. But you can't draw, and the AI picture never looks like the one in your head.
OpenAI released ChatGPT Images 2.6 on November 4. It's on every ChatGPT plan, free included. It can now make looping GIFs, and it can save a character (you, your pet, a mascot) by name, so it looks the same every time. OpenAI says it's also about 50% faster.
When Images 2.5 came out, I started paying for ChatGPT again. So I tried 2.6 right away, on my phone.
I typed @sketch and drew a mushroom with 2 eyes and a smile. Very basic. About 30 seconds later, ChatGPT gave me a cute green mushroom pet. Then I asked for a looping GIF. 45 seconds later, my mushroom was smiling and blinking on a loop.
Then I saved him as a character. When I asked in the same chat, ChatGPT asked me to upload the image again. So I downloaded it, uploaded it, and named him Mushpie. Now when I type @mushpie, he shows up as a choice above the message box.
If you make content, save your character once, and every post keeps the same face.
Where it breaks: GIFs are still reaching some accounts. If you get a still picture, try again in a day or two. And OpenAI hasn't said how many GIFs each plan gets.
One rule from me: only save photos of yourself, or of people who said yes.
I put all 10 steps on one page, from the doodle to Mushpie, with a screenshot for each.
📰 This week in AI
🎙 Granola now types for you in any app, for free
You type the same emails and prompts every day. Talking is faster, but most dictation leaves "um" and missing commas everywhere.
Granola, the AI notepad for meeting notes, now does voice typing in any app. On Mac, you press the Fn key and talk. On iPhone, you use its keyboard. It cleans up your words (no "um", proper punctuation) and pastes the text right where your cursor is. Emails, Slack, docs, AI prompts.
It's free with unlimited words for every Granola user, on Mac, Windows and iPhone. Android is coming soon.
Until now I used two tools: Wispr Flow for dictation, and Granola for my meetings, because my days are back-to-back calls. For meetings, Granola is the best one I've found, because it works with my Claude. Now one tool does both, so I'm switching.
Right now it's free and unlimited. I don't know how long that lasts, so I'd try it this week.
🧠 Claude's new top model is out. Save it for your hardest job.
A new model comes out, and everyone says switch. So you use it for everything, and your limit is gone by Wednesday.
Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.2 on November 9, in the Claude app and Claude Code. Anthropic says it's up to 30% faster than Fable 5.1, and better than Opus 5.5 at hard work like coding and research. Even Anthropic says Opus 5.5 is still better for daily tasks.
(Mythos 5.2 is the same model, only for approved cyber and biology teams. You can skip it.)
I tested Fable on my hardest job. I run a team of AI agents in one workspace, my headquarters. For example, one agent writes a video script, then hands it to the next. I made Fable the manager of all of them.
It understood its job really well, and it found a problem I had missed. Every agent read the whole history just to find where to begin. My usage limit is a bucket, and that was emptying it fast. So Fable made each agent leave a clear note: what it did, and which files the next agent should read.
Nice surprise too: paid users get 1 to 3 extra Fable resets this week, based on how long they've paid. I've been on Claude for more than a year, so I got 3.
Your move this week: pick one big, messy job you keep putting off, like a launch plan or a process at work that keeps breaking. In Claude, switch to Fable 5.2, explain how it works today, and ask:
Where does this break? Fix the biggest problem first.Keep Opus 5.5 for everything else. Matt Shumer, whose reviews I follow, says low or medium thinking is enough for almost everything.
🔎 ChatGPT gets 1 search for every 5 on Google, OpenAI says
When you need an answer, where do you go first? For years, almost everyone went to Google.
On November 2, Adam Fry, who leads ChatGPT for everyday users, said ChatGPT now handles about one-fifth as many search questions as Google. He counts anything you'd have typed into a search engine before.
That's OpenAI's own number. They didn't share the raw counts, and no outside group has checked it yet.
Still, I think it's a big deal. I remember when Google had no real rival for years. Now it's no longer the automatic first stop. And free ChatGPT users can search too.
I think Google saw this coming. That's why it keeps adding AI to Search, like AI Overviews and AI Mode. They're getting ready.
So basically, you now have two good places to start a search.
Your move this week: next time you look something up for work, ask ChatGPT first. Then click one of its source links and check the fact yourself, especially numbers and names.
🛠 Run Claude Code inside a code editor
You pay for Claude Pro, and you code with Claude Code in a terminal. Your code sits in another window. So you keep jumping between the two to see what changed.
JetBrains sponsors this issue, so I tested their new tool, Air, myself. I did every step on a Windows PC on November 10.
Air comes inside JetBrains code editors like PyCharm. It runs AI agents like Claude Code in one place. You see every change in red and green, and you can run your tests without leaving the editor. Air is free. You only pay for the Claude plan you already have.
Who it's for: you write some code, or you want to learn. If you never touch code, skip this one.
I put the whole setup in a 17-page guide, with a real screenshot for every step. Plan for about 45 minutes. Most of that is the 1 GB download.
Two catches the guide fixes for you:
The Chat view fails with a Claude plan. Pick Terminal on the Claude card. JetBrains says this on its own help page.
"API Usage Billing" at the top means Claude Code is using a pay-per-use key. Type /login and choose your subscription.
Part 5 adds a small usage bar at the bottom of the editor. Think of your Claude limit as a bucket. Now you can see how full it is before it runs dry.
No Claude plan? The guide also sets up JetBrains' free Junie Lite agent. I tested the setup, but I didn't compare how well it codes against Claude.
Your move: start the PyCharm download first, then read the guide while it finishes.
👋 Before you go
I'm a little worried about Google right now.
ChatGPT now gets 1 search for every 5 on Google. And Google is slow to give us its best AI. Its strongest model, Gemini 4 Carbon, went to number 1 on a big AI leaderboard. But you and I still can't use it. Only a small group of cyber security teams can.
Then Anthropic released Fable 5.2, and any $20 Pro user could use it the same day.
To me, that shows where each company is going. Anthropic is going after serious, hard work, with models you can rely on. And honestly, Claude was my number 1 AI this whole year, so I'm happy with that.
So my real question is for you: what happens to Google now? Hit reply and tell me.
Dan Rice · AI Signal · Every Tuesday
Read once. Use AI better all week.
