Antong Yin founded an AI startup – and as a power user, he also delegates his weekly shopping to an automatic workflow.
Prompt shopping: Founder Antong Yin delegates his everyday life to artificial intelligence (AI). Groceries, evenings in the restaurant, marketing for his startup – an AI agent plans and does all of this for the Berliner. “In the past two years, many new ways to use AI sensibly have been developed,” he says in an interview with Gründerszene. “Automations and coding are by far the biggest time savers.”
Yin is co-founder and CEO of Acemate AI. The startup is building a learning and teaching platform for universities and other educational institutions. Using notes and lectures, users use Acemate to generate flashcards, learning tasks and podcasts.
For Yin himself, AI is a sparring partner for new ideas: “Sometimes I just talk for five to ten minutes” into a chatbot. He also built workflows that research new customers and markets for Acemate. You automatically plan advertising budgets and create campaigns for social media.
Claude Cowork as a “digital employee”
Yin builds these workflows with Claude Cowork. To do this, Yin describes a goal in the chat field and the AI assistant derives concrete actions from it. The system completes tasks independently, like a “digital employee”. It accesses the computer and communicates with numerous apps, such as Slack, Powerpoint or Google Chrome.
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Claude Cowork breaks down text prompts into sub-steps that the program then processes. It sorts folders on the computer, creates projects or completes tasks in the Internet browser. “Claude is, so to speak, my developer when it comes to automation or other coding tasks – without me writing a single line of code today,” says Yin.
The technology even takes care of his weekly shopping and reserves tables in restaurants. Yin explains how this works in an interview. He says: “I think anyone who has never seen a line of code in their life can write this.”
AI company Anthropic released the paid desktop app in January. Only subscription users can download Claude Cowork. During sessions, computers always need an internet connection.
Anyone who solves routine tasks with Claude Cowork can create a “skill” prompt. This is a guide, similar to a manual or a checklist for specialist tasks. Claude Cowork saves this “skill” as a template and you can activate it as often as you like. To do this, you set a trigger, for example a specific prompt. As always, the more precise the input, the more targeted the output.
Anthropic itself warns of security gaps in Claude Cowork. The agent-based way of working, Internet access and the ability to access websites and computers independently involve risks. The manufacturer recommends not granting access to local files containing sensitive information – such as financial documents, confidential documents or personal data. Anyone who uses the Chrome extension should limit access to trusted websites and leave sensitive accounts out. Anthropic also advises actively monitoring Claude for suspicious actions: unexpected clicks, unusual inputs or indications of so-called prompt injection attacks, in which external content attempts to manipulate the AI. Particular caution should be taken when accessing the computer directly – unlike other cowork tools, there are no additional authorization checks.
Claude reads the shopping list – and orders from the online shop
For his weekly shopping, Yin ordered Claude Cowork to connect to the online shop of a supermarket via the Chrome browser, where Yin logged in once in the browser. To do this, the AI assistant automatically uses so-called MCP interfaces. He is also supposed to read the “Reminders” app on Yin’s Apple notebook. Yin maintains his shopping list there under the name “Groceries”.
Yin wrote the following prompt in Claude Cowork:
Create a Claude Cowork Skill that automates my weekly shopping on REWE. Read my shopping list from Apple Reminders (“Groceries list”) via osascript. Translate each article into a contextually appropriate German search term (e.g. trash bag bathroom -> cosmetic bin trash bag 10L). Open REWE via Claude in Chrome MCP. First check my purchase history at “rewe.de/shop/deine-produkte”. If there is a suitable product, add it directly. If no match: Use REWE search and choose the cheapest, contextually appropriate option. Put everything in the shopping cart, check off the items in the reminders list and send me a short report.
As soon as Yin activates the skill, Claude Cowork reads the shopping list. It then opens the Chrome browser. Yin previously allowed a Claude extension for this. The AI autonomously calls up the online shop, searches for the desired products and puts them in the shopping cart.
For example, if Yin regularly buys the same Gouda or Feta, Claude can recognize this from history and prefer the goods. “For goods with a wide price range, it helps to define in more detail what you want to buy in the prompt,” he says. “For example, if I write ‘cheap dry red wine for cooking’, Claude wouldn’t pick out the most expensive bottle.”
The final step remains with Yin. “In the end, of course, I still look in the shopping cart again before Claude buys nonsense.” Only then does he order the delivery.
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An assistant for dinner
For restaurant reservations, Yin uses another Claude Cowork feature: Scheduled Tasks. Some restaurants don’t open reservations until 14 or 30 days in advance. In the chat, Yin describes the task, links the booking portal, states the date and time and confirms it. From this moment on, the process runs itself: As soon as the booking portal releases the tables, Claude Cowork opens the browser, fills out the form with Yin’s contact details and confirms the reservation – without Yin having to intervene himself. However, one condition applies: his laptop must be online at the agreed time.
His prompt:
Reserve a table for 2 people on [Datum] around [Uhrzeit] via this booking link: [Link]. My contact details: [Name, Telefon, E-Mail]. You can only book 14 days in advance — create a Scheduled Task that automatically places the reservation on the earliest possible day.
“I think that’s the beauty of AI: Access to these great technologies is suddenly being democratized,” says Yin. “Everyone can build their own apps and their own automations. I’m very excited to see how this develops in the next weeks, months and years.”
