Every Tool I Use and Why — As of 2026

My primary reasoning and writing collaborator. The context window (200K tokens) and Claude Code changed how I work more than any other tool. Would be last to cut.

Primarily for DALL-E 3 image generation and the mobile voice interface. Use it less than 2024 — Claude has pulled ahead for my main use cases.

Google Workspace integration is the value — summarizing email threads in Gmail, Slides drafting from docs. The integration beats the standalone model quality argument.

All code editing. Replaced VS Code completely. The multi-file Composer and codebase Q&A are genuinely useful daily. Recommended for anyone who writes code but isn't a full-time engineer.

Serverless Python for scheduled jobs and automation pipelines. The DX is exceptional — infrastructure requirements defined in decorators. Most underrated tool in the stack.

AI video avatar for LinkedIn and YouTube. Record audio, get synchronized video. ROI is clear: one session produces content that would take half a day of camera setup otherwise.

Voice cloning for video content and audio summaries. Quality has improved dramatically — the robotic quality from 18 months ago is mostly gone.

Product analytics for this site. Funnel analysis, session recording, A/B testing. Enterprise-grade on a generous free tier. The right tool for a solo creator who thinks like a PM.

Traffic sources, SEO performance, geographic distribution. GA4's reporting is worse than Universal Analytics but the Search Console integration is valuable.

Powering automation workflows — content processing, summarization pipelines, RAG systems for knowledge management.

Embedding generation (text-embedding-3-small) for RAG systems and occasional multimodal tasks.