After his wife received several serums and creams for Christmas, a Hacker News user and his wife didn't know when to apply them or which shouldn't be combined. A 15-minute ChatGPT session gave her a weekly routine with its reasoning, and as someone who already knew a lot about skincare she could spot any wrong suggestion.
I've got these skincare products: [LIST PRODUCT NAMES AND KEY INGREDIENTS FROM THE LABELS]. My skin is [TYPE] and I'd like [GOAL]. Suggest a simple morning and evening routine for the week, explain the order to apply things in, and point out any products that are usually best not used at the same time. Tell me which bits I should check on the packaging or with a pharmacist.
Replace the [PLACEHOLDERS] with your own details before you send it.
How to try it
- Copy the product names and main ingredients from each label.
- Ask ChatGPT for a weekly routine and which products not to layer together.
- Patch-test new products, follow the packaging instructions and ask a pharmacist or dermatologist if you have a skin condition.
More shopping use cases
Sanity-check Black Friday deals with Perplexity
Which? asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for the best Black Friday air fryer deals. Only Perplexity found the experts' top pick and a working discount code, but it misquoted the deal price, so Which? suggests AI as a starting point, not the final word.
I'm thinking of buying [PRODUCT AND MODEL] for [PRICE] at [RETAILER]. Using current sources, tell me: the typical price over the last six months, the lowest recent price, other UK retailers selling it now and their prices, and any valid discount codes. Link every price to its source so I can check it.
Find an item in stock at your local shop with a Grok agent
In October 2026 we asked Grok Bot, a desktop AI agent with its own browser, to find a 10 m Cat6 network cable at Anhoch, an electronics shop in Skopje. It searched the shop's website, found an SBOX Cat6 UTP 10 m patch cable for 250 MKD, compared two Lanberg options at 290 and 450 MKD (both warehouse-only) and used the per-branch stock list to find the mall branch that had it. We popped in and bought it in one trip; the agent didn't buy anything itself.
Find a [ITEM AND SPEC, E.G. 10 M CAT6 NETWORK CABLE] at [SHOP NAME OR WEBSITE] in [TOWN OR CITY]. Search the shop's own website and compare 2-3 suitable options in a short table with the product name, key specs and current price. Use the shop's branch or stock information to tell me which branch has each one in stock right now, and flag anything that's warehouse-only or online-only. Give me a direct link to each product page. Don't buy or reserve anything; I'll go in and buy it myself.
Find savings in a year of grocery receipts with ChatGPT
One shopper had ChatGPT analyse a year of online grocery orders. It worked out the household could save hundreds a year by switching to equivalent own-brand products and buying specific items from specific shops.
Here is my online grocery order history for the last [PERIOD]: [PASTE OR UPLOAD]. Analyse it and tell me: 1) my top 20 items by total spend, 2) where a cheaper own-brand equivalent exists, 3) which items are cheaper at [OTHER SHOPS], and 4) a realistic estimate of yearly savings. Present it as a short table.
Reference: Hacker News