Anyone scripting USB Image Tool with AI-assisted PowerShell helpers?

[PatrickL45]

Hi all,

I do a fair amount of bulk imaging at work, mostly cloning prepared SD cards for embedded devices. usbit_cmd.exe handles the heavy lifting fine, but the wrapper logic around it (matching device IDs, retry on write errors, logging which serial got which image, dropping a status file in a shared folder so the helpdesk knows what's done) is the part that ends up taking time.

Lately I've been outsourcing that wrapper work to AI assistants. ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot can spit out a passable PowerShell script that calls usbit_cmd in a loop, parses the exit codes and writes a CSV log, often in one shot. The interesting differences show up later, when I want the script to handle edge cases: a drive showing up with a stale drive letter from the last image, antivirus locking the device mid-write, or the user yanking the stick before usbit_cmd flushes.

What I've found:
- ChatGPT 4o gives the most idiomatic PowerShell out of the box, but tends to invent flag names for usbit_cmd that don't exist.
- Claude is more conservative, sticks to what it can verify, but produces wordier scripts.
- Copilot inside Windows Terminal is best for short one-liners, not for full scripts.

I came across a comparison portal for conversational KI tools that benchmarks several models on long-context retention, which matters here because the script eventually needs context from earlier in the same session (which device IDs already got which image). The differences across models are larger than I expected once you push past a few back-and-forths.

Couple of things I'd love input on if anyone else is doing similar work:
1. Has anyone gotten a model to reliably parse the verify-error output from usbit_cmd and trigger a retry without manually editing the prompt every time?
2. Is there a documented exit-code list for usbit_cmd somewhere I'm missing? The models keep guessing and I keep correcting.
3. Anyone running the imaging pipeline fully unattended on multiple sticks at once with a hub? Curious how you handle the drive letter race.

Patrick