• Jay Eskenazi planned the itinerary for his trip to Europe with Claude and the Grok Bot.
• Once he landed, Eskenazi said he realized Meta's Muse was the most helpful for travel planning.
• "These are the things that a very seasoned travel agent from 30 years ago would've done for you," he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jay Eskenazi. He lives in Los Angeles and worked in user experience for 19 years. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I'm in Paris, and I'm going to Barcelona tomorrow. The trip is three weeks.

I came here for the first time last year, and it was my first long trip by myself. Last year, planning it was very stressful, and I did a ton of research.

This year was the same thing, where I had these very long notes. At this point, everyone knows that you can go to any AI tool and say: "Hey, I'm going to City X, give me an itinerary for seven days."

I had this epiphany a few weeks ago, where I realized I had all these note files, bulleted stuff, and coffee shops to go to.

If someone gave you a list of five coffee shops and they were in five different cities, as someone who's not familiar with the terrain, you wouldn't necessarily know how to structure that in the course of the day. Which coffee shop goes with which museum?

So, instead of doing an itinerary, I was like: "Here's my notes. Put them together in an organized way for me. Structure them in a logical sequence."

I hadn't used Claude in a while, so I tried that a little. I use Grok a lot, and I just upgraded because I wanted to play with the Grok Bot. So, I made this really fancy itinerary. I kept iterating it. It did a really good job. Then I got here and was like, "It's not as good."

I'm naturally curious, so I tried out Muse. I think I must've gotten Muse two days before I left.

I was looking at this itinerary a couple of days ago and was like, "I don't like what it says tomorrow." So I opened Muse and asked for an afternoon itinerary. It spat out all of this stuff. I was like: "Oh! There's some new stuff in here."

These are really common scenarios. Maybe there are five museums you want to go to. It takes a lot of work: this museum's closed on Tuesday, this one's closed on Monday, and this one's free next Friday. The AI tools can structure that in a way that you would do if you had a thousand hours.

It's a small thing, but when you apply that to a thousand decision points, it does a really nice job of putting those things together.

If you're like: "Hey, I want to go get coffee, then I need something to do before I get lunch, then I want to go to the museum this afternoon." Most of the other AI tools will just give you the list. Then you're like, how do I get from place to place to place?

Muse would actually put it on a map with dots. I clicked a button, and it put it in Google Maps. I had this experience this weekend. None of the other tools did that.

I'm going to Barcelona tomorrow, and I'll get there in the evening. One of the reasons I picked it was because there's an annual festival. I timed it so I can be there for the core of the activities. But the main activities weren't published, even last week, because they're on some website in Spanish that didn't have the fully fleshed-out program.

In the hourlong Uber to Versailles, I was like, "What's the structure for Thursday?" It's able to pull that. It's got: this opens in the morning, this is free, this is mid-day, this is in the evening.

I don't know if ChatGPT would have it. Maybe it would, but it doesn't seem to output it in the same way. Also, I gave it access to my email, so it knows I'm leaving tomorrow. It has an idea tab that said, "I can map the opening night before you get there." It's proactive.

The other thing: I was indecisive about my plans over the last couple of days. What Muse was doing was checking the times to see what ticket availability looked like. It's doing this proactive thing for you, where it tracks it, because options are shrinking.

As a non-developer, I set up OpenClaw in February. That took a lot of time. I had a developer friend help me for hours. Then I had all these AWS bills I didn't understand. I'm asking it to give me a recipe; I don't know how many tokens that's going to cost. I ended up having to shut it down.

Muse is like OpenClaw for normies. If you're not a tech person, these things are useful because they do what an assistant would. Anyone could set this up.

It comes back to when I worked at Expedia. These are the things that a very seasoned travel agent from 30 years ago would've done for you. That would be a very expensive vacation for that level of service.

I also just got access to Instinct yesterday, because I was on the waitlist. I'm very curious, but you can't see exactly what it's doing. It had good ideas and gave me an itinerary, but it had to put them in a Google Doc. I was also confused because I don't remember what I told it, and it made personalized recommendations. I was like: "Wait, how did it know this?"

Muse just seems easier. It's very fast, and it feels more responsive.

• Ken Ehrman created a GPS dog fence after his niece's dog was killed.
• He uses the product daily with his own dog, Reese's.
• He holds more than 40 patents, but says this one has been the most impactful.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ken Ehrman, co-founder and CEO of Halo Collar. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Back in 2017, my niece's dog, Ruby, escaped from their yard and was hit by a car. My niece was only 11, and this was her first experience with death. She had just rescued Ruby the year before, and the dog had become a huge part of the family. We were all hysterical.

I used the same sort of invisible dog fence that had failed Ruby, and I worried about my own dog, Reese's. One day, a lightbulb went off for me.

My brother and I had already built a company that used GPS tracking to monitor high-value assets for companies: items like forklifts for Walmart, and rental cars for Avis. I knew the capabilities of GPS, and I thought, what more high-value asset is there than the family dog?

The idea had been right there in front of me, but I didn't see it until tragedy struck.

My patent attorney asked me to invest right away

I immediately called my patent attorney. He did some research and shared that I was likely to get a patent on the device. He also told me he wanted to invest.

That stopped me in my tracks. My brother and I hold more than 40 patents. We'd worked with this attorney a lot, but he'd never asked about investing in one of our products.

When I pointed that out to him, he explained he also used an invisible fence for his dog. He could immediately see the benefit of replacing that with a GPS collar. He thought my idea was an incredible product with a huge opportunity.

I built a team with my brother and Cesar Millan

My second call was to my brother, Michael. I knew I wanted him on the team. I'm a pretty smart guy, but I pale in comparison to Michael. Our skills are like peanut butter and chocolate: when you put those together, it's a great combination.

I had moved on from the previous company I founded, but Michael was still working there. He was hesitant to leave the security of a salary. So, I turned my attention to the other person I knew I needed to get on board: Cesar Millan.

I knew from my previous experience that I needed a subject matter expert, and Cesar is the best dog trainer in the world. But he's a very hard man to get hold of. It seemed next to impossible, but through enough networking, I was finally able to reach his team and demonstrate the product. Once Cesar was on board, Michael was too.

I use the product all the time with my dog

We officially started the company in 2018, and spent about two years on research and development. I thought creating the product would be a cake walk, but it wasn't. It's challenging to design a GPS product that is indoors 90% of the time and can withstand rough-and-tumble use by dogs.

My dog, Reese's, was an integral part of the team. She was the tester for all our iterations. One major investor wanted to see the collar in action, on my dog, at his house. Reese's came through, and he invested.

My earlier inventions weren't products that I used. That's different with Halo, because I use it every day to protect Reese's. I'm intimately familiar with the user experience, and because of that, I spend a portion of each day engineering the product, in addition to my role as CEO.

We're on track to exceed projected revenue

Having the collar and the ability to set a "fence" anywhere has made it easier to travel with Reese's. We can now easily bring her on vacation to my mother's or my in-laws', which we couldn't do before.

Last year, Halo Collar did more than $99.7 million in sales. This year, we're on track to exceed our projected revenue. That's unusual for a tech company, and something I've never experienced as a CEO.

As an entrepreneur, my biggest goal has always been to solve a problem. Dogs are man's best friends, and we have a responsibility to keep them safe. It's way too common for pets to get lost or hit by cars. If I can help prevent other pet owners from experiencing the heartbreak my niece went through, I'll consider that a success.