Tell us three things: 1. What you do (job, industry, student, career-changer, whatever) 2. What brought you to Clief Notes 3. One thing you're trying to figure out right now related to computing or AI I'll respond to every single one. And read each other's intros too because the person who's stuck on the same problem as you might already be in this thread. I'll go first I am Jake, I have been working in tech for 15 Years, building with Generative AI for 3 Years straight now! Excited to teach and learn! That's it. Simple, scannable, gives you data on who's joining and what they need, and keeps the feed clear for content that retains people past week one.

This is my first major win applying what @Jake Van Clief ef teaches. Since subscribing to Claude Code on March 19th, I’ve been able to show so much progress that my company has now upgraded me to the Max 5x subscription. Looking forward to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible and continuing to improve our processes! As a Finance Manager responsible for month-end closing, I wanted to see what Claude Code could actually achieve—and it delivered! Even without Azure or backend access to our ERP system (D365 F&O), I didn't let that stop me from being "efficiently lazy." Claude Code showed me how to use the Playwright MCP to control Chrome and handle the heavy lifting for me. The script now automatically downloads the monthly trial balance, populates an Excel template, identifies discrepancies via color-coding, and even takes screenshots to document numbers from various reports. I’m already tackling my next big automation project—a task that is notoriously tedious when done manually. Stay tuned for that post, as well as more month-end automation updates in the near future! I had Claude code describe the workflow: Common Reconciliation — Monthly Close Automation with Claude Code + Playwright MCP Every month-end I run a single slash command (/mec-common) and pass it a month number. Claude then drives the entire reconciliation process end-to-end, touching both a live D365 ERP system and a multi-sheet Excel workbook — no manual steps. The workflow in three phases: Phase 1 — Trial Balance Claude navigates to the D365 Trial Balance page, clears any stale filters, sets the correct date range, triggers a recalculation, and downloads the export. The Excel file is placed in the right folder, and the data is pasted (values only) into the reconciliation workbook's Trial bal D365 sheet. A full workbook recalculation is then forced before anything is read. Phase 2 — Revaluation Check Claude loops through ~50 reconciliation sheets. On each sheet it finds the last row where column C says "Revaluation" (there are two — the second one holds the actual diff) and reads the value in column G. If the diff is outside ±1, the sheet tab is colored red. One sheet (150070) is always flagged red and requires manual review regardless.

In Part 1, I was riding high. I had Chrome, Edge, and Firefox all running simultaneously, tripling my speed on a massive D365 rebilling project. I felt like I’d cracked the code to being "efficiently lazy." Link: Mini-Series Part 1: The "Manual Hell" Rebill Project · Clief Notes But the victory was short-lived. I was driving the car at 100mph, but I didn't realize how much fuel I was burning. The Crash: 3 Hours to Zero The next morning, I fired up all cylinders. It was beautiful—until it wasn't. In under 3 hours, I burned through my entire token allotment. I was dead in the water with a 1.5-hour wait until my limits reset. With the clock ticking and sales reps still needing updates, I had to go back to doing it manually. And that’s when the "Aha!" moment happened. The "Tab" Breakthrough While I was clicking and typing manually to pass the time, I realized something: I wasn't really using the mouse. I was mostly hitting Tab and Shift-Tab to navigate the D365 fields. I asked Claude: "Can Playwright just 'Tab' through the browser instead of searching for elements and taking screenshots for every move?" Claude’s answer: YES. My jaw dropped. From "Visual Driving" to "Macro Speed" The old workflow relied on Claude "seeing" the screen via screenshots to make sure it was in the right spot. It was accurate, but heavy. I had Claude rewrite the interior workflow to a deterministic loop: 1. The Setup: I open the URL, set the filters, and select the first row. 2. The Loop: * Tab to Invoice → Enter. 3. Repeat. I added small buffers (100ms between tabs, 4s for page loads) to ensure D365 could keep up. See the video for how the flow runs in real life! The Result: 90% Savings & 10x Efficiency I asked Claude to evaluate the two methods. The numbers were staggering: Old "Visual" Flow: - Tool Calls: ~500 calls per 50 orders - Token Usage: 100% (High Burn) - Logic: Screenshot-dependent (Slow)