Let AI catalog your house for insurance

If my house ever burned down, I like to think I would get over it pretty quickly. It's just a box holding a bunch of my stuff, right? Insurance will rebuild it, and I'll fill it with stuff again. Over time, it's become less of a house and more of a home, and I know it won't be that easy. I can start to make it easier for future-me by documenting everything in my house right now.

It took me over a decade of homeownership, but I finally walked through my house while recording a video of everything I own. But if the day ever comes, it'll be a pain to write out everything that's in the video. So I'm going to make Gemini do it. 

I picked Gemini because I remembered a video Simon Willison posted a while back documenting a bunch of books on his shelf and Gemini was able to convert it into json. That video is seven seconds. My video is fifteen minutes. Let's see how it does.

First and foremost, my 4GB video needs to be under 2GB.

I asked it for a good ffmpeg command to reduce the file size, and it suggested downsizing it to 1080p from its original 4k. That may ultimately make it harder for the AI to "see" and catalog some items, but that's a tradeoff I'm fine with. If it still gets 80% of the list correct, that's a great start.

ffmpeg -i house_walkthrough.mp4 -c:v libx265 -crf 24 -preset fast -vf scale=1080:-1 -c:a aac -b:a 128k house_walkthrough_1080p_fast.mp4

I only know what ffmpeg does, but not all its flags and options. I like just telling LLMs what I want to do with the video and why, and it does the CLI for me. Unfortunately, it still takes a while to render video. In this case, almost 15 minutes.

Next, I upload the <2GB video to Gemini and prompt it:

This video is a walkthrough of my entire property to document my belongings for insurance purposes. Take note of each room I walk through and document every belonging that could be lost in an event like a fire and need replacement. Output the full list in markdown, divided by room. Each item needs to be on its own line. 

It kicked out a list within a minute. I followed up once to make it more comprehensive and it was pretty good!

...
Living Room
Sofa (dark fabric, 3-cushion)
Accent pillows (patterned)
Velvet armchair (teal/grey)
Patterned slipper chair
Black velvet ottomans (2)
Floor lamp
White bookshelf
Large wall clock (teal rim)
Globe
Lego Sets:
    Star Wars Millennium Falcon (Large Collector's Series box)
    Technic Mack Truck
    Various smaller boxed sets
National Geographic Geode kit
Framed family photo collage (7 frames)
...

It's not perfect, but like most output from LLMs: it's a good start that saves me a ton of time. Additionally, for insurance companies, you need to be very thorough about your possessions to get the best possible outcome for yourself. I copied in that reddit post in my next prompt and told Gemini to use it as a guideline for building my own list.

Here is the "fucking comprehensive" insurance inventory you requested. I have applied the "adjuster's guideline" logic to every single room. I have broken down composite items (like beds) into their individual components and listed the "mundane bullshit" that adds up to thousands of dollars in a total loss claim.

That nearly doubled the length of the list it previously gave me! 

Now I have a house_list.md file and I want to see if Claude Cowork can give me a inventory of products and links to buy them. I created a claude_cowork directory containing that md file, then prompted

I'm documenting all the possessions of my house in case of a catastrophe that requires me to replace everything. This folder contains a list of everything I've documented. Create me a spreadsheet of all the items, links to purchase new versions of the item, and the cost.

It asked some followup questions to narrow the scope (cool), chugged along, and then... I hit my daily usage limit. This is the only thing I asked Claude today! I used to have the Max subscription but downgraded to Pro recently, and this is one of the first times I'm hitting this limit. Fortunately, this step isn't really necessary until tragedy befalls me, so I guess I'll just wait until tonight.