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What are the 5 tools you simply couldn't do your work without?

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This could be related to your industry, or even a side project you're working on.

Here are my 5 (I couldn't function without them):

  1. Grammarly – proofreading my texts, not just posts, but also client communication

  2. ChatGPT / Claude – mostly brainstorming, help with copy, and summarising

  3. Figma – I can put the basic graphics together quickly.

  4. Translator – sounds incredibly old-school, but English is not my mother tongue

  5. Gmail – and not only for communication, but also for storing ideas and sending myself email reminders for posts

[and soon one more that I am working on – – prevents me from being banned on LinkedIn, so I will not lose my account.]

What are your five?

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my 5:

1. claude / chatgpt - brainstorming, drafting, thinking out loud

2. notion - documentation and planning

3. canva / figma - design when i need to, mostly collaboration

4. loom - async walkthroughs and feedback, saves so many meetings

5. granola - meeting notes, honestly don't know how i managed without it

the rest of what i rely on daily are platforms not tools so i stopped myself there.

 Its interesting to see Granola in many people's list.

   I like how it started because the very first 3 or 4 are also in my portfolio! :)

 agreed granola is so good

   what is granola?

   granola is an ai notepad & meeting assistant. just like fireflies, fathom.

   defo try it, one of the best tools in the ai-native stack, we want to make an integration for it in our product it's that good!

   I am carrying around a Plaud recorder. Instead of writing on a tablet I just talk to people. Hardware gives me optionality to talk ideas in a IRL situation.

 funny how things change.. Granola is awesome, though I haven’t really moved beyond meeting notes.

What do you use Canva for, if you have Figma?

 good question. i use canva when i'm out of time or need something quick.

 When you say need something quick, do you mean a template?

 Yesss, as someone who's not a design-first person:)
Do you use Canva?

 I put chatbots on top as well, as stated in another reply. I'm in love with them.

   any you’d highlight?

  Regarding the granola, I downloaded it and will try it and give you feedback soon, but it looks amazing at first glance. Thank you, Riya.

Love this list! Here are the 5 I absolutely couldn't do my work without right now (heavy on the content and code leverage):

  1. Google's Antigravity – Absolutely changes the game for development. Having AI agents autonomously plan code, run the terminal, and test in the browser saves me hours of manual dev work.

  2. Claude / ChatGPT – Essential for brainstorming, structuring logic, and refining raw ideas into punchy copy.

  3. Canva – My go-to for rapid graphic design. I can spin up polished presentation decks, social assets, and marketing visuals in minutes.

  4. CapCut – Essential for video editing. It makes putting together clean, engaging video hooks and product demos incredibly fast.

  5. OBS – The perfect tool for capturing screen recordings, studio-quality product walkthroughs, and async updates.

It’s all about maximizing output while keeping the tool stack lean!

 Are you a streamer? :D because many of them use OBS for livestreams :D CapCut is also on my list btw :)

Haha not a streamer — just a solo founder who records a lot of product demos and walkthroughs! OBS is honestly underrated for that use case. Glad CapCut made your list too — it's become essential for anyone creating content solo 😄

 aaa okay, I totally forgot that founders also has that obsession to record things :D

 Hi Ayesha, thank you for sharing. Have you tried Claude Design for PowerPoints yet? I'm curious as to how it compares with Canva. I was thinking of paying for another tool for graphic design and image creation since Claude isn't really focused there but was unsure of which to pursue. Thoughts?

 Hey! I’m on the free tier of Claude so I haven't tested the design workflows yet.

But as a designer, I'd say stick with Canva. Claude is a lifesaver for text, copy, and code, but it doesn't "think" visually. If you want pure AI slide generation, check out Gamma instead!

 Thank you so much! So many tools out there for a solo founder. I appreciate the quick response!

 Yes. Canva is beautiful and complete.. you can do so much with their templates as a start..Didn't know about google antigravity.

Antigravity is free to use. You can check it out.

 yes, thanks, I already went and check. When I'll have given my all to make memsoph great, and will have another project, I will most certainly try it. I shall not be distracted by shiny objects now.

 I shall not be distracted by shiny objects" — honestly the most founder advice I've heard all week 😄 Good luck with Memsoph!

 Thanks a lot. it's much needed.

Great list! Here are mine:

  1. Fluxerv – my own tool, but genuinely the one I use most. Notes that generate working interactive components with /ai

  2. Claude – thinking partner for architecture decisions

  3. Supabase – I'd be lost without it for auth + database

  4. Vercel – deploy and forget

  5. Linear – keeps my solo dev chaos organized

Would love to know what you think of Fluxerv if you get a chance to try it, Nika! 👋

 good morning Memduh, I’m interested in trying it out. Where can I find it? Thanks.

  Hi Neal! You can find it at , free to start, no waitlist. Would love to hear what you think!

 Hey, I haven't been using it yet since I do not know whether I have any use case in my work :)

 No worries at all! If you ever find yourself needing a quick interactive tool inside a doc, that's exactly when it clicks.

 ooh Fluxerv caught my eye. notes that turn into interactive components? how does that work in practice?

Great thread though

Mine are honestly pretty boring but they get the job done:

  1. Claude / ChatGPT for brainstorming and first drafts. I use Claude more for longer reasoning tasks and ChatGPT for quick stuff.

  2. Notion for keeping everything organized. My brain would fall apart without it.

  3. Figma for quick mockups even though I'm not a designer. Good enough to communicate ideas without scheduling a meeting.

  4. Perplexity for research. Stopped opening 20 tabs since I started using it.

  5. Slack, not because I love it but because everything dies without it.

The real pattern I notice is that none of these are fancy. The tools that stick are the ones that just quietly work every day without you thinking about them.

 I find it as a solid foundation, honestly :D

 thanks for your feedback, everyone got their own foundation checklist so it depends on what you prefer and what you need for handling tasks

 and if you don't mind I have another irrelevant question about PH

Do you know how to avoid being rejected for thread on p/general, since I want to share some topics about AI and my expertise but the system keep rejecting my request so it's kind of upset to not know the reason, thanks in advance Nika

 To be honest, the only thing that comes to my mind is to write on the support, because it is probably auto-rejected. Alternatively, I would rather try to post in other forums: :)

 This is the most underrated line in the thread. The tools that stick are the ones you stop noticing. The ones I resent are the ones that quietly turn me into the integration layer between them. A tool earns its spot when it disappears, and loses it the second I become the glue.

 "Becoming the glue" is exactly the right frame for it. The moment I'm manually copy-pasting context between two tools, that's the tax I didn't agree to pay. It's not just friction, it's a sign the tool doesn't actually fit the workflow.

  exactly, and the copy-paste tax compounds. Every tool you add multiplies the seams instead of adding to them. That's the whole reason I'm building DukieX: one Space where the community, memberships, store and the rest actually share state, so there's no glue layer to be. You just described the product thesis better than my landing page does.

 glad to hear that, hope that your clients can also understand the LDP that clear

 The "tools that quietly work" point really lands. Quick question! you keep Perplexity separate for research instead of just asking Claude or ChatGPT. What makes it click for that specifically? I run everything through Claude, so I'm curious what I might be missing.

 Perplexity surfaces sources I can actually verify, fast. Claude is better for reasoning through something I already have context on, but when I need to know what's actually out there right now, I don't want it guessing. The citation layer matters more than people give it credit for.

   Exactly... The moment I'm manually copy-pasting context between two tools, that's the tax I didn't agree to pay

 This is the most underrated line in the thread. The tools that stick are the ones you stop noticing. The ones I resent are the ones that quietly turn me into the integration layer between them. A tool earns its spot when it disappears, and loses it the second I become the glue.

 Slack, not because I love it but because everything dies without it. YESSSSSSSSSSSSS

Mine is pretty simple, so I won't even share it. However, I'm a bit surprised. Does Grammarly really still make sense nowadays?

 I still have Grammarly running, but I really don't know why. I downgraded to the free version at least a year ago, and I turn it off because it's annoying... it actually makes no sense that I still have it running!

 I do not pay for that but it is still improving my (sometimes poor) English in real time :D

Good list. Here are mine:

  1. Claude — everything from drafting to reasoning through complex problems, it's the default first stop

  2. Lovable — spinning up quick prototypes without a full dev env

  3. My personal diary that has all my passwords — unglamorous but the whole operation falls apart without it

  4. Linear — keeps the engineering team aligned without the overhead

  5. Custom Claude Code stack — we've built internal agents that replaced about three separate tools we used to pay for

 Why did you opt for Lovable?

 Speed and experimentation. It makes it easy to prototype and pressure-test ideas quickly before committing engineering resources.

 
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 That last one is the quiet 2026 trend: people collapsing three paid tools into one stack. The seams between tools were always where the time and money leaked. Curious which three it actually killed for you.

   The tools that stick are the ones you stop noticing... A tool earns its spot when it disappears, and loses it the second I become the glue.

 We had Calendly, DocuSign, and a separate email tool all talking to each other through Zapier. Replaced the whole thing with one custom stack.

 Zapier as the load-bearing wall is such a familiar setup. It works right up until one zap fails quietly and you find out three weeks later from a customer.

None of Calendly, DocuSign or the email tool are bad products. The cost was never the subscriptions, it was you sitting in the middle reconciling them.

Ankit put it better than I did. You lose the tool the second you become the glue.

Genuinely curious though: when you collapsed it into one custom stack, what did you have to give up? Everyone talks about what they gained and nobody mentions the tradeoff. I work on this problem for creators, so I care about the honest answer.

 

Polish at the edges: Calendly and DocuSign spent years on timezone bugs, calendar sync, e-sign compliance you don't know exists till you're rebuilding it. Your v1 is never as smooth.

You become the maintenance: No vendor updates, no support line. When it breaks, it's mine, the problem moves inside my own house without asking.

  2. slack

  3. gcal/gmeet

  8. Claude/Chatgpt

 Some are new to me, and some I heard about before! :) Solid list, thank you for listing more than 5 :)

  • Slack - communication, also personal notepad

  • Figma - for detailed design work and team handoffs

  • Sivi - for instant marketing design generation

  • PostHog - analytics, session replays, and feature flags in one place

  • Windsurf/Devin - not just for engineers

Seems the common thread is no longer tools that help me work, its tools that work alongside me.

 Sivi is new to me. When was the launch? I somehow missed it :)

 Hey, thanks for asking! Sivi Gen-1 launched in 2023, not too late :) Sivi generates editable marketing designs such as banners, social creatives, ads, etc. from a text brief, layered, editable, and on-brand rather than flat images. is coming soon, so it's actually a good time to discover it.

 So will be there any relaunch in the near future? :)

 love that you arekeeping an eye out! not a relaunch, a big upgrade :)

Gen-3 is coming soon. Want me to ping you when it goes live?

 I prefer Trello to Slack

 fair enough. Trello is great for tracking work. Slack for communication.

 agreed PostHog is very helpful tool.

Just curious how do you use Slack for personal notepad?

 I use self DM for quick ideas, links, drafts, etc. all goes there from any device and search makes it easy to find old notes. I also set reminders on my own messages and create canvases for TO DO lists. Since I'm already in Slack all day for team comm, there's zero friction.

That's really interesting! I totally agree with your list.
As someone working on a product, , an AI-powered business intelligence and financial analytics platform, with my business partners, these are the tools I use almost every day:

1. ChatGPT: This is my go-to brainstorming partner. I mostly use it for validating ideas, refining product features, creating content, researching markets, and thinking through business problems.

2. Figma: This tool is essential for turning ideas into something visual. Whether it's dashboard concepts, landing page designs, or product mockups, it helps me communicate ideas quickly.

3. Google Sheets: Still one of the most powerful tools for startups. I use it for financial planning, market research, competitor analysis, project tracking, and organizing feedback.

4. Gmail: It's where I manage conversations, handle all the communication, keep important documents, store ideas, and send reminders to myself when inspiration strikes.

5. Notion: Our central workspace for organizing ideas, documenting product requirements, tracking progress, and keeping everyone aligned as we build WareLux.

Building WareLux has taught me that great tools don't replace execution, they help you execute faster and make better decisions!

Reading this thread, the pattern that jumps out: almost everyone's list is 2–3 AI tools deep now. Mine too —

  1. Claude Code — half my shipped code at this point, honestly more coworker than tool

  2. ChatGPT / Codex — one app now: where I argue about architecture, and the implementation pair for bigger diffs

  3. Higgsfield — all my image + video generation; product visuals and social content without touching a design tool

  4. Wispr Flow — I barely touch my keyboard anymore. I talk to Claude Code, and honestly to every app. Best speech-to-text I've used so far

  5. Atlaso — one shared memory across all of the above (disclosure: building this one). It exists because of exactly what and said upthread — I was the glue, re-explaining my project and my preferences to each AI separately, every single day. The copy-paste tax is real.

Curious if anyone else has hit this: the more AI tools on your list, the more time you spend re-introducing yourself to each of them.

   Yeah honestly that copy-paste tax thing is so real, didn't even have a name for it until you said it but it's exactly why I end up dumping the same project context into three different chat windows every morning. The stack you listed makes sense too, Claude Code plus ChatGPT as an architecture sounding board is basically how half my week goes now.

Building a shared memory layer for that instead of just living with it is such a logical next step, feels like the obvious fix once you actually notice how much time gets burned re-explaining yourself. Good luck with Atlaso, that's a problem worth solving.

   

"dumping the same project context into three different chat windows every morning" — that might be the most precise description of the disease I've heard yet. I'm stealing it 😄

And you've hit on the exact thing: nobody notices the tax until someone names it. I only started building the fix the day I realized how much of my morning was just... onboarding my own tools. To each other.

Since you clearly live this daily — it's live at if you ever want to see whether it kills the three-window ritual. And I mean this as the opposite of a pitch: you said upthread that a tool earns its spot when it disappears. If it doesn't disappear into your workflow, telling me why would be worth more to me than any upvote right now.

     Which do you find the best option for coding? Claude Code or Codex?

      Claude Code, without hesitation — it's my daily driver and does the heavy lifting on almost everything I ship. Codex has some immense raw power though, so I keep it around as the second pair of hands for bigger implementation passes. But if I could only keep one, it's Claude Code every time.

Also pro tip, i connected codex via my own custom built MCP so claude code and codex talks to each other like two senior developers.

     That's pretty cool, actually I also noticed that it would be easier if models were talking to each other :D

 Claude is still the preferable choice for my team though

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