Monster Letter #5: Turn a pile of receipts into a simple expense summary (+ 5 more good things)
Fri, Oct 30, 2026
Hi, AI monsters! Find out why an AI needs a flashlight at bedtime, then turn crumpled receipts into a plain-English money summary. Down below, Google lets you make your own game just by describing it. Scroll on down!
Why did the AI bring a flashlight to bed?
Afraid of the dark mode! 😂
Crumpled receipts in the car, notes in your phone, one mystery charge… and zero idea where the week went? Paste the mess into ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Grok (black out account numbers first) and ask: “Turn these receipts/notes into a simple expense summary by category (groceries, gas, eating out, random). Give totals and flag anything weird. Keep it plain English. Here’s the stuff: [paste].” No spreadsheet required unless you want one. Just a clear “here’s where it went” so your brain can relax.
Stuck between two phone plans, two vacuums, two gym memberships… and 14 browser tabs open? Paste both options into ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Grok: “Compare these two options side by side. Make a simple table: real price (including fees), what’s included, contract or cancel rules, and the catch. Then tell me which one fits someone like me: [your situation, budget, must-haves]. Option A: [paste]. Option B: [paste].” Double-check prices on the actual site before you buy. AI can misread fine print too. You still make the call.
Got a work email that says “let’s circle back to align on Q4 deliverables and leverage our bandwidth”… and you just nodded? Paste it into ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Grok (swap out names and anything confidential first): “Translate this work message into plain English. Tell me: (1) what they actually want from me, (2) any deadline hiding in there, (3) what the acronyms and buzzwords mean. Then give me a short, normal-sounding reply. Here it is: [paste].” Check your company’s rules on AI tools before pasting anything sensitive.
Real news from real sources. Every news bit links to the original story at the outlet that reported it (for example Google and The Verge).
Google shared three new study features in Gemini Notebook. You can make a 60-second Short Video Overview to unpack a tricky idea, an Interactive Learning Overview that walks you through your own notes step by step with summaries, slides, quizzes and flashcards, and new quiz types: short answer, multi-select and fill-in-the-blank. Toss in your class notes (or the manual for that new hobby) and get quizzed instead of rereading it 14 times. It only knows what you give it, so messy notes in, messy quiz out.
Read it at Google →OpenAI upgraded ChatGPT’s Google Chrome extension. Once it’s installed, you can tag Chrome in ChatGPT’s web or desktop app and it can look at the tabs you already have open, like comparing three sofa tabs without copy-pasting a thing. The sidebar now shows your past conversations too. Think before you let any AI see or click around your browser: close tabs with banking, medical or private stuff first, and read any form it fills before you hit submit.
Read it at The Verge →For the “I have a game idea but I can’t code” crowd: Google launched Playground, an experimental browser playground where you create games by describing them in plain text, then tweak the physics, rules, characters or whole world just by asking. You can keep a game private, share a link with friends or publish it to a gallery. It’s early and experimental, for people in the U.S. age 18+, and creation access depends on your Google AI subscription.
Read it at Google →That's it for today. Try one tip, then hit reply and tell us how it went. We read every one!
— Lewis & Martin
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