While I have yet to clean an AR(will get that chance soon!).. I have used boresnakes on milsurps for some time.
I use carb cleaner on my SKS's(and my 1 AK) to loosen up the crap in the bore, and then run a brush through the bore a few times, followed by another spritz of cleaner. Then, it's rather simple to just pull the bore snake a few times. Oddly, cleaning the bore is the easiest part
I use it in place of patches, but IMHO the brush on it can not replace a good brush on a rod.
On my Mosin Nagants, I run an amonia soaked patch through the bore a few times to nuetralize the corrosive crap, run another patch with Ed's Red on it, scrub with brush, and then bore snake with CLP on it. I've run about 1200 rounds through my M44 in the past 6 months, while it's not the volume shooting I do with the 7.62x39(and soon perhaps the .223), I've only used 2 patches per cleaning session to kill the corrosive crap. Havn't noticed a change in accuracy at all, still able to nail clay pigeons at 100 yards easily.
Doing the carb cleaner thing on a K31 though, as the ammo is much cleaner and not corrosive. That gun is SCAREY accurate on paper, so we'll see if not using patches effects it any.