We’ve moved past the "wow, a computer can write a poem" phase. Now, we’re in the "utility" phase. The landscape has splintered into specialized tools that do specific jobs way better than a generalist bot ever could.
I’ve spent the last year testing just about everything, and these are the six tools that actually earned a permanent spot in my daily rotation.
If ChatGPT is the loud, confident consultant who always has an answer (even if it’s wrong), Claude feels like that quiet, brilliant research assistant who actually read the reading list.
I find myself reaching for Claude whenever I need to deal with huge amounts of information. You can drop entire books or 50-page PDF reports into it, and it doesn't just skim them; it understands them. The writing style is different, too. It feels less "robotic corporate speak" and more nuanced. If you’re trying to write something that sounds like it came from a human brain, Claude is currently the best ghostwriter in the game.
For the longest time, AI coding felt like having a junior developer looking over your shoulder, offering helpful suggestions that were often slightly broken. Cursor changed the game by building AI directly into the editor.
It’s hard to explain until you try it, but Cursor feels less like typing and more like architecture. You can literally highlight a chunk of code and say, "Change this so it talks to the user database," and it just... does it. It understands your whole project, not just the file you have open. It turns "coding" into "directing," and honestly, it’s hard to go back to a regular editor after using it.
I realized recently that I barely Google things anymore. The experience of wading through ads, SEO-spam blogs, and recipe sites just to find a simple fact is exhausting.
Perplexity is what we all wanted Google to become. It’s an answer engine, not a link engine. You ask a question, and it reads the internet for you, synthesizing a direct answer with footnotes. The footnotes are key—because AI does hallucinate, having a direct link to the source gives you a safety net. If you care about accuracy more than creativity, this is the first tab you should open.
