There’s more to being an author than writing books. At least, there is for me. I’ve been writing online for more than 20 years. More than 30 if you count my Geocities website in the mid-90s. But I went full-time in 2026. Now, with two decades of search engine optimization, blog post writing, website content, whitepapers, book ghostwriting, online journalism, web publication editing, and high-tech/SaaS content marketing behind me, I like to leave room on my time table for experimentation.
Many of my experiments involve figuring out what works best for me. How can I fit this new technology into my workflow? Sometimes, I discover something that works. Other times, I just discover things.
This time, I created a useful tool that I can share with others.
How I Created a Simple Mileage Log With MPG Calculator Using Claude.ai
You may have heard about large language models (LLMs). They’re all the rage right now. Some people love them. Some people hate them. Others, like me, just thinks they’re tools—useful or not depending on your ability to learn how to use them effectively.
I wanted an that would allow me to track my vehicle mileage and calculate my MPG periodically without having to manually enter my data every single time I wanted to run calculations. That seemed easy enough. Truthfully, it was. All I had to do was create an app.
There was just one problem: I’m not a coder.
Now, I could learn how to code apps. After all, I taught myself HTML, CSS, and JavaScript when I needed those tools for certain purposes. The process of learning Python or React would have taken me far longer to get the app I wanted. The other option was: I could just ask Claude.ai to do it for me. All I needed to do was tell Claude what I wanted and it would do the work for me.
Thirty minutes later, I had a nifty artifact.
Below is a screenshot of the app with my vehicle data entered. Simple fields. Enter the date, your odomoter reading, gallons pumped, and cost per gallon. The app calculates the rest. As you can see, after three fill ups, I’m getting about 20.4 MPG in my Entourage.
An artifact is an app created by Claude that is shared with the public. It can be used and modified by others. Why not share something worthwhile and let everyone benefit from it too?
To check out this app, if you have Claude, just click here and you can input your own vehicle data and have the app calculate your MPG. You can download the app in CSV or Excel. If you own multiple vehicles, you can do this for each vehicle. All of your data is stored locally in your browser and is not shared with anyone else. Try it out and let me know how you like it!
Allen Taylor is the author of several books, fiction and nonfiction, with more on the way. First published at Substack.