Back in late August, the deluge of companies pushing AI into everything and anything actually had a nice win - Google turned its AI feature into an award search engine. Ask it for a nonstop to Miami “using AAdvantage miles” and it’ll show you the miles price plus taxes (Alaska and Hawaiian work too, along with Hilton, Choice and Wyndham on the hotel side). The cents-per-point math is still on you. But it’s a sign of where things are going: AI is getting really good at the burn side of this hobby, regardless of whether you can write code.
Talk to your award search. seats.aero now has an official connector for Claude (Settings > Connectors > add a custom connector, then paste seats.aero/mcp). Then just ask: “JFK to Tokyo in business for two, sometime Mar 10-25. Which programs have space, and which of my transfer partners get me there?” It does the partner legwork that used to take a spreadsheet and five browser tabs. Award Travel Finder has a similar connector with a free (economy-only) tier.
Get a text when space opens. If you’ve got a computer that’s always on (a Mac mini, a Raspberry Pi), someone open-sourced a little award alert watcher that checks seats.aero every 10 minutes for, say, business to Tokyo for under 70k with 2x seats, and pings you when it shows up. You tell an AI agent what you want in plain English and it edits the alerts for you (note: it needs seats.aero pro).
The same “watch, check my criteria, text/alert me” setup works on the earn side too. Costco’s gold bars sell out quick when the spread is in the buyer’s favor. Many services will message you when gold’s in stock. Want that message in a different format (text/push notification/carrier pigeon)? Have an agent monitor the service’s alerts - even set up an email address for your agent - then have it send you the alert the way you like it, like texts. It can also strip out the info you don’t care about and run the calculations that matter for your setup. A free page watcher like changedetection.io + an agent can also do the job if you want to DIY it.
Let the AI find things and tell you about them. Don’t let it act unattended with your $ or points, unless you scope it clearly and give it clear, deterministic permissions (e.g. hooks).
Built your own award or gold watcher? Which checks did you automate, and which decisions did you keep for yourself?