Building Your AI Toolkit

There are over 15,000 AI tools on the market right now. New ones launch every single day. If you tried to keep up with all of them, you'd never do any actual work.

So don't.

Here's the truth about AI tools: you need two or three good ones. That's it. Everything else is noise until you've maxed out what those two or three can do for you. And almost nobody has maxed them out.

Let me tell you what I'd pick if I was starting from scratch today.

Your primary AI assistant: ChatGPT or Claude. Pick one as your daily driver. Either works. ChatGPT (from OpenAI) is the most popular, has a huge ecosystem, and is slightly better at creative/conversational tasks. Claude (from Anthropic) tends to be better at analysis, longer documents, and following nuanced instructions. I use both, but if you forced me to pick one, I'd say Claude for business work.

Free tiers of both are totally usable. But if you're going to use AI daily, and after this week you probably will, the paid tier is worth it. ChatGPT Plus is $20/month. Claude Pro is $20/month. You get faster responses, access to the best models, and higher usage limits. Think of it as the cost of a mediocre lunch that saves you five to ten hours a week.

Your research tool: Perplexity. Google is great when you know what you're looking for. Perplexity (perplexity.ai) is better when you need answers synthesized from multiple sources. Ask it a question and it gives you a concise answer with citations you can click to verify. I use it for market research, fact-checking, and any question where I need current information (remember, ChatGPT and Claude have knowledge cutoff dates and can confuse old info for current).

Your document tool: NotebookLM. Google's NotebookLM (notebooklm.google.com) lets you upload documents, reports, PDFs, even audio, and then have a conversation with them. It only answers based on what you uploaded, which means way fewer hallucinations. If you regularly work with long reports, contracts, or research docs, this is the tool that'll surprise you most.

That's it. Three tools. Total cost: $20/month if you pay for one primary assistant, free for the rest.

Now, what about AI features built into tools you already use? Notion AI, Google Workspace AI, Microsoft Copilot. These are getting better fast. If you're already in those ecosystems, turn on the AI features and experiment. They're not as flexible as a standalone tool like ChatGPT or Claude, but for quick tasks inside the app you're already in, they reduce friction.

Here's how I evaluate any new AI tool that crosses my radar. I ignore the demo. Demos are designed to impress you with cherry-picked examples. Instead, I take a real task from my last week and try it. If the tool handles my actual work better than my current setup, it earns a spot. If not, I move on. Takes ten minutes and saves you from shiny-object syndrome.

One more thing. Going deep on a few tools beats going wide on many. Learning the advanced features of ChatGPT or Claude, custom instructions, projects, file uploads, structured outputs, will get you more value than signing up for ten specialized tools you use once.

Don't collect tools. Pick 2-3 that fit your workflow and go deep.