The AI Tools I Actually Use

Every week someone publishes “50 AI tools you need.” You don’t need 50. You need a few that you actually know how to use. Collecting tools feels like progress, but the person who knows one tool deeply beats the person with forty open tabs every time.

So this isn’t a mega-list. It’s the short stack I actually reach for, sorted by the job I’m doing, with an honest note on what each one is best at and how I use it.

Writing and thinking: Claude

Claude is my default and the tool I open most. It writes the most naturally out of the big three, and it’s the best thinking partner when I need to talk something through.

How I use it: rough notes in, a clean first draft out. I paste a messy idea and ask it to argue the other side of a decision. I drop in a long document and ask for the five things that matter. If you only adopt one tool, make it this one, and feed it a few samples of your own writing so it stops sounding generic.

Content and creative: ChatGPT

ChatGPT is where I go for ideation and images. Its image generation is genuinely good, and it has more built-in extras (voice, browsing, a wider set of tools) than anything else.

How I use it: brainstorming angles for content, generating visuals and thumbnails, and quick back and forth when I’m thinking out loud with voice mode. For the actual editing of a video or a post, I pair it with whatever tool fits the platform. The AI does the thinking and the raw material, the editing tool does the polish.

Business automation: Claude plus a chat tool

This is where AI stops being a helper and starts being an employee. I use Claude to design and write the workflows, and a chat automation tool (ManyChat is the common one) to actually run them, so a DM or a comment turns into a booked lead without me touching it.

How I use it: Claude maps the logic and writes every message in the flow, then the automation tool sends it on a schedule or a trigger. The magic isn’t the tool, it’s the workflow behind it. This is exactly the kind of thing my team builds for businesses at Growth Lab Studios, because a good automation quietly works every hour you’re asleep.

Building things: Claude Code or an AI builder

You do not need to be a developer anymore. If you can describe what you want, an AI builder can ship it.

How I use it: for real projects I use Claude Code. If you’re non-technical, a tool like Lovable lets you build a working website or a small app by describing it in plain language and refining step by step. Start with something tiny and real, a landing page, a simple calculator, and let the tool teach you as you go.

The one honest rule

Notice how short this list is. That’s the point.

Pick one tool that matches what you do most, open it every day for two weeks, and push it further than feels comfortable. Depth is where the results are. The tools change every few months anyway, but the habit of reaching for AI on real work, and knowing how to steer it, is the thing that actually compounds.

Start with Claude for writing and thinking, add ChatGPT when you want images and the extras, and only reach for automation and builders once the daily habit is solid. Master the loop, not the logos.