What are the 5 tools you simply couldn't do your work without?
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):
Grammarly – proofreading my texts, not just posts, but also client communication
ChatGPT / Claude – mostly brainstorming, help with copy, and summarising
Figma – I can put the basic graphics together quickly.
Translator – sounds incredibly old-school, but English is not my mother tongue
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 – SafeLimit – prevents me from being banned on LinkedIn, so I will not lose my account.]
What are your five?
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my top 5 :
-Notion = my business brain / business OS
-Claude = my assistant
-VEED io = for content creation
-OnboardHive = to sign and onbaord my clients
-Loggd = for productivity
my 5:
1. claude / claude code - brainstorming, creating Agents
2. notion - planner
3. Wispr-My best when prompting my AI
4. Awesome screenshot - walkthroughs and feedback
5. google workspace - meeting notes, emails, google task
My honest five are less exciting than most lists here. Stripe, a notes app, something for design, a calendar, and whatever runs my actual product. The pattern I notice is that the tools I'd never give up are the ones holding the stuff that's painful to move: payments, customer records, content.
The ones I swap constantly are the glue tools sitting between them. That's usually a sign the glue should have been part of one of the core tools in the first place.
I'm building DukieX, so I'm in the business of trying to be one of the few tools you don't give up rather than another one in the rotation. Curious which of yours are keepers versus glue.
For me as a learner writer:
ChatGPT / Claude – mostly brainstorming, help with story ideas, and summarising.
Notion – To attempt to be more organised in one place!
Scrivener – is a great place to put all the relative info for a book in the one place, including any research.
MidJourney – I just love the output it comes up with.
Canva/Leonardo - great graphics and ideas as well.
Could add a few more but you asked for 5! 😊
my five
1 Claude my extended brain for almost everything
2 Figma the fastest way to turn ideas into something visual
3 More Focus keeps distractions out of sight and my attention on one task
4 Oculta invisible notes for meetings and presentations.
5 Notion where everything eventually ends up
Interesting how most of my stack is focused on thinking, communicating, and staying focused rather than actually "doing" the work.
My 5 (mostly building + content these days):
Claude - brainstorming, drafting, and pressure-testing decisions before I commit
PostHog - analytics and understanding what users actually do, not what I assume they do
Langfuse - tracing and debugging anything LLM-related, hard to work without it once you start shipping AI features
Discord - where most of the real conversations with the community and team actually happen
SyncBooster - company marketing
Trello – keeps projects from living only in my head
As a technical founder building in the AI space, mine are pretty specific:
Claude Code - not just for writing code, but for thinking through architecture, reviewing my own PRs before merging, and catching the edge cases I mentally skipped over. It's become my rubber duck that talks back.
Linear - the only issue tracker that doesn't make me hate tracking issues. The keyboard shortcuts alone recovered hours of my week.
Raycast - the thing I'd notice missing within 10 minutes on a new machine. Once you've built workflows around it everything else feels slow.
Notion - primarily for async team communication and as a second brain. Not perfect but the bar for migration is high now.
Superhuman - sounds like overkill until you're triaging 200 emails a day. The split inbox and keyboard speed made email something I can clear rather than something that accumulates.
Interesting to see Claude/ChatGPT on so many lists - feels like that one is converging into infrastructure at this point, less "tool" and more "layer."
@galdayan Nice list! For Notion, I'm curious to know what you mean by the bar for migration is high now?
My most important tools are:
1. ProtonMail and Gmail (depending on the business I’m working on).
2. Nozbe
3. Six strategic questions
4. Pre-Motem Analysis
5. Evernote
Truth is that I use at least 5 tools more that are also important to me.
Easy! I couldn't function without WhatsApp!
Nashra
For me right now, a business consultant
Claude: find the patterns in my sales + consulting calls
Nashra.ai: Publishing, newsletter, landing pages ...etc. (I founded this)
Social media: reach, exposure
Stripe: obvious
Riverside: record + manage my podcast