I've tried 100+ AI tools, here's what actually works.

I feel like there's just a ridiculous amount

of AI tools out there right now.

And it's actually quite difficult to work out

which ones are worth your time and money.

For me especially, I value my own time.

I don't want to be messing around with all sorts of AI tools

and just finding out that they're rubbish.

But unfortunately, I have used quite a few tools.

And in this video, I wanted to list some of the tools

that I'm actually using,

some of the tools that my team is using,

some of the tools that other people are using,

that are actually useful and worth paying for.

Some of these aren't also fully AI,

but they do also sort of complement AI.

Now, of course, Claude is the big one.

Claude is the one that I've been covering a lot on the channel.

I feel like a lot of people have been using

because I think Claude is very well designed

for productivity-focused stuff.

So, if you're someone who needs to do research,

if you're someone who needs to work with files on your computer,

if you're someone who wants to code,

Claude, I feel like they've done such a good job of housing everything all in one,

especially when you look at their app.

So having the app and having the chat functionality,

the co-work functionality, and the coding functionality

all in one place,

just makes it super easy to use all of the tools

without having to constantly change windows

and sort of change context or whatever.

And I find myself switching between all three very quickly and easily

because it's in one app.

It just makes my life a lot easier.

Their chat functionality is like any other sort of chat AI tool

which you can use to do research,

find answers, sort of come up with strategies and stuff.

I use it a lot for just day-to-day things.

When I need to do some research

or I need to be educated on something

or I'm trying to find out about something,

I use Claude to do all that sort of stuff.

I, of course, change between the languages quite often as well

because you don't want to be using their most powerful model all the time.

However, I do pay for the max plan, which is $200 a month,

which I think is worth it.

I think the sort of capabilities

and stuff you get with it are insane.

Because of that, I do actually tend to use Opus more than I probably should,

but I've never hit the limits,

so I'm not really complaining.

Their co-work feature in particular, I think,

is super powerful because co-work,

as the name suggests--

Imagine it like an AI agent doing work for you in the background.

And it can do stuff on your computer.

So, if you give it access to a folder on your computer,

you can have it do stuff within that folder.

So, I've shown examples in the past where

if you have sort of financial statements or something in a folder,

you need to get information

from those financial statements,

you can do that with co-work.

You can also have it sort of compare legal documents or whatever,

have it compare information.

And they have a lot of other ideas here.

So, you can have it do all these different things here.

Organise my files.

I think that's a good one.

So, let's just say you have a folder which has a bunch of different files,

like your downloads folder,

and you wanted to organise all those files for you,

you can do that, you can have it organise images, videos,

or have it do a specific thing.

Maybe you're looking for files with a specific file name

and to put them all in a folder.

You can have it do that sort of thing.

You can have it write stuff for you,

create a landing page, build a dashboard.

Those are actually very similar to Claude Code as well.

You can have it analyse Google Drive documents

because it doesn't just have to work on your computer.

If you have it connected with the connectors functionality,

and they have a bunch of connectors here,

you can have it get information from those places.

So, it doesn't necessarily just have to be on your computer.

I think this is another good example

of say you have information in a service like Linear

or Figma or whatever.

It could be Google Drive,

but you want that information on your computer.

You want it as a PDF,

you want it as a CSV or something like that.

You can have it do this for you

without you having to do it manually.

And then they also have Claude Code,

which I've done a video on, which I would highly recommend,

just showing how to use Claude Code in the app

to make stuff, to make a website or whatever.

The app version is good.

It's great.

I think it's great for doing sort of more basic things,

like building a website, building an app.

Maybe if you're not working on multiple projects at the same time,

even though you can have multiple projects at the same time going,

I think if you're starting out,

this is what I'd recommend.

If you're someone who's not really a developer,

who's not messed around with code and stuff in the past,

but wants to build things,

this is what I'd recommend checking out and using.

OpenAI have their own version of Claude Code,

which they call Codex,

and Codex, I'd say, is just as good as Claude Code.

But it does depend because some people say

that one is better than the other.

I personally haven't seen too much of a difference.

What I end up doing is if there's something I can't do in Claude Code

or Claude Code is struggling, then I switch to Codex.

And then if Codex is struggling, I switch to Claude Code.

So, I switch between the two models.

I am not tied to any of these things.

If a better model came out tomorrow,

if a better app came out tomorrow, I would completely switch.

I don't care about any of these companies or brands.

I want to use whatever works for me, whatever I think is best.

Codex do have their own app as well,

which I really like.

I actually think they've done a really good job with this app

because you can use it for multi sort of agent coding.

So, you can have a bunch of different things going in here

and work on different projects all at the same time.

And I actually think the app is really well designed.

Is it better designed than Claude Code?

I think it depends on what you're looking for.

I think that's the great thing

about all of these apps and what they can do.

It really depends on what you're looking for.

What I do like about Codex

is that you can connect it to your GitHub,

you can connect it to an IDE,

you can see your lines of code, what changes and stuff have been made.

You have the normal chat box like you would,

and then you can see your projects on the left hand side.

And again, you can work on multiple projects at the same time.

So when one agent is working in the background on one project,

you can then work on another project

or another branch with Codex

and have multiple agents working at the same time,

coding stuff in the background.

I do like the app.

I think they've done a really good job with it

and I think they've done a good job

of catching up to Claude Code

because when Claude Code came out,

it was super popular.

I feel like it blew up.

Everyone was raving on about it.

So it's good to see ChatGPT now have Codex,

which I think is just as good.

The app that I've been using though

to code stuff and to make stuff and to build stuff

is an app called Conductor.

And what I really like about Conductor is the way it looks,

the way it feels, and the way it works.

The sort of UX of this and the UI design of this,

I think, is awesome.

On the left, you have all of your projects and repos.

In the middle, you have your chat box and stuff.

And you can see your branches at the top as well.

And on the right, you can see your files,

you can see the changes, and you can see your terminal.

Everything all in this one place.

It's like opening up a dashboard

and just working on all your projects.

I absolutely love this thing.

And the reason why I love this thing

is that I can actually switch between the models.

So, I have both Codex and Claude Code hooked up in here.

I pay for both of those subscriptions

and I can switch between the two languages whenever I like.

This is what makes Conductor for me really powerful,

being able to switch between the two models.

And you can even change the sort of thinking levels.

You can enter plan mode and stuff.

You can enable fast mode.

There's so much you can do in here.

And I really do like how it works and looks.

I think this is a natural graduation away

from using Claude Code app

and the Codex app.

I'm also not a big fan of using Claude Code

in the terminal itself.

Mainly because I just feel like the terminal, for me,

especially coming from a design background,

just seems too sort of robotic

and not as useful as something like this

where I can see everything all at once

and I don't necessarily have to be logging into a terminal.

What I also like about this is that I can drag and drop images