My AI Toolbox: A Developer's Productivity Stack

A look at the AI tools that have transformed my workflow and significantly boosted productivity.

I get excited talking about AI tools because they've become such incredible force multipliers for my work. Sometimes I want to teach a class just on the workflows these enable. Here's my current AI toolbox and how I use each piece:

Speech & Text Processing

Superwhisper has been absolutely incredible for speech-to-text. Beyond basic transcription, it can transform my spoken words into properly formatted messages, documents, and more using custom prompting. This has completely changed how I draft content and communicate.

Research & Search

Perplexity has actually replaced Google as my go-to search tool. The quality of research and information synthesis is remarkable. It's transformed how I gather information and conduct research.

Large Language Models

I use a variety of LLMs for different purposes:

  • GPT-01 for deep thinking tasks, particularly when paired with Superwhisper for long-form discussions. I've been testing the o1-Pro model for the last couple weeks and it's been incredible, but hard to justify the costs for most people that aren't doing large daily driving tasks.
  • Claude 3.5 Sonnet as my main workhorse - it's become my go-to for most tasks
  • GPT-4o and Mini for specific use cases where they excel, like meeting summaries
  • Google AI Studio (Pro models) when I need extremely long context windows
  • Ollama/Llama 3 occasionally for local processing. I did setup a data flow pipeline to enrich records with locall LLMs (mistral at the time), enriching nearly 30+ million records, which would have been astronomically expensive to do with cloud LLMs.

Development Tools

  • Cursor.ai - An incredible AI-powered IDE that's changed how I write code
  • v0 by Vercel - Perfect for getting applications off the ground quickly
  • Replit.ai - Great for rapid prototyping and development
  • bolt.new - My recent favorite for quick application development

AI Tools Folder

The Impact

What amazes me is how underutilized these tools still are. They're not just incremental improvements - they're complete game-changers for productivity. Each tool serves a specific purpose in my workflow, and together they create a powerful ecosystem that significantly amplifies my output.

I'm constantly exploring new tools and workflows, but this current stack has proven incredibly effective. If you're not using these technologies yet, you're missing out on some serious productivity gains.

I'm considering putting together a more detailed guide on how to effectively combine these tools into powerful workflows. Would that be something you'd find useful? Let me know!

This post is part of my ongoing exploration of productivity tools and workflows. Check out my other posts for more tech insights and tips.