I mostly do numeric simulations and claude is extremely good at turning half baked ideas into real implementations that can be tested and discarded (sometimes even accepted). That gives me a huge bonus in time saved chasing dead ends. It also knows a lot about numerical optimization, more than I do, so it can suggest interesting algorithms and solutions. Moreover, it is extremely good at understanding complex scientific code bases, since it also understands the science behind it. often use it to explain what some module does, to summarize scientific papers or to explain some concept I am unfamiliar with. Then it can be used to write down articles/reports with plots and tables, to be refined manually at the end. Not to mention the time saved in debugging, probably its strongest point.