Instead of jumping between apps, top PMs use a central tool like Claude Desktop or Cursor as a 'home base.' They connect it to other services (Jira, GitHub, Sanity) via MCPs, allowing them to perform tasks and retrieve information without breaking their flow state.
Principal PM Dennis Yang uses the AI-powered IDE Cursor not for coding, but as a central workspace for writing PRDs in Markdown, managing them with Git, and connecting to tools like Jira and Confluence. This consolidates the PM workflow into a developer-centric environment.
Generative AI's most immediate impact for product managers isn't just writing user stories. It's consolidating disparate information sources into a single interface, freeing up the cognitive load wasted on context switching and allowing for deeper strategic thinking.
Instead of relying on one-off prompts, professionals can now rapidly build a collection of interconnected internal AI applications. This "personal software stack" can manage everything from investments and content creation to data analysis, creating a bespoke productivity system.
Early AI adoption by PMs is often a 'single-player' activity. The next step is a 'multiplayer' experience where the entire team operates from a shared AI knowledge base, which breaks down silos by automatically signaling dependencies and overlapping work.
As power users interact with multiple AI models, they face a new challenge: context fragmentation. Important conversations and strategic plans become scattered and forgotten across platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini, highlighting a growing need for a unified system to manage and track disparate AI interactions.
User workflows rarely exist in a single application; they span tools like Slack, calendars, and documents. A truly helpful AI must operate across these tools, creating a unified "desired path" that reflects how people actually work, rather than being confined by app boundaries.
Most users re-explain their role and situation in every new AI conversation. A more advanced approach is to build a dedicated professional context document and a system for capturing prompts and notes. This turns AI from a stateless tool into a stateful partner that understands your specific needs.
AI developer environments with Model Context Protocols (MCPs) create a unified workspace for data analysis. An analyst can investigate code in GitHub, write and execute SQL against Snowflake, read a BI dashboard, and draft a Notion summary—all without leaving their editor, eliminating context switching.
Instead of holding context for multiple projects in their heads, PMs create separate, fully-loaded AI agents (in Claude or ChatGPT) for each initiative. These "brains" are fed with all relevant files and instructions, allowing the PM to instantly get up to speed and work more efficiently.
The true power of AI in a professional context comes from building a long-term history within one platform. By consistently using and correcting a single tool like ChatGPT or Claude, you train it on your specific needs and business, creating a compounding effect where its outputs become progressively more personalized and useful.