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Ask HN: What useful AI tools do you use every day?
There are thousands of AI tools launching every month, but very few become part of our daily workflow.
I’m curious, what AI tools or features do you genuinely rely on every day? This could be anything from coding copilots and writing assistants to niche productivity tools, automations, or personal hacks using LLMs.
- yogini 1y ago1. ChatGPT I use it mostly to dump quick ideas and then expand them later by using it as my thinking partner. Also I use chatgpt for brainstorming ideas for marketing campaigns, writing copies etc. I have few custom GPTs created for my every use case 2. Claude I use Claude projects for writing articles and for SEO optimisation 3. Cursor I use Cursor for coding daily. Now quite used to the flow it creates and makes my coding super fast 4. Sora and Gemini For image generation. Mostly I need that to share social media posts All other AI tools come and go but these are 4 constants for me for last few months.
- mcwhy 1y agoeverything thats wrong with The Internet in one comment
- hn_throw2025 1y agoYour first point resonates with me. I am often using a mobile device and away from my computer, but want to put something in my Obsidian notes or a Trello card. ChatGPT speech rec is excellent (so much better than iOS), so often I will start a temporary chat, press the Mic button, and say something like : “Take the following dictation and repeat it back to me without adding anything. Don’t alter the content, but clean it up if needed… “. Then I ramble on for a while, with pauses when I need to gather my thoughts for the next bit. Then, when I get the paragraph back, I long press for the copy option and paste it back into my other app.
- rajkumarsekar 1y agoHow’s your experience been with Cursor compared to GitHub Copilot?
- MollyRealized 1y agoGoblin.tools
- zormino 1y agoNotebookLLM. Load in technical manuals and datasheets, then ask it questions and check the parts it references instead of searching tens of thousands of pages across dozens of diferrent documents. It's the most useful AI tool I've tried so far for embedded work.
- flowerthoughts 1y agoIsn't Claude (i.e. general LLM) enough? I seem to have luck having it interpret datasheet PDFs for me.
- Frieren 1y agoNone day to day. I may use a tool time to time, but I do not use anything daily (on purpose at least, as all software nowadays has AI running in the background that I do not care for).
- darqis 1y agoNone. Very rarely I need a bash script or systemd service written from a command line, or just something where I know what to search for and what to replace it with. Then I use Co-Pilot. The Jetbrains code helper AI is 99% useless, also inconsistent.
- stoicfungi 1y agoClaude.ai + Claude Code + Overlay(https://overlay.one https://overlay.one) The last one is built by me, a tool to interact with websites.
- 3D30497420 1y agoI’m learning German, and my listening comprehension particularly needs work. So I create mini stories on different topics using Claude, then ElevenLabs to do narration.
- dustincoates 1y agoI do a very similar thing. I have Gemini create me a story based on a historical activity that happened on that day with an instruction to use A2 and below constructs. Then I have it give me: - A transliteration (I'm still getting used to the non-Latin alphabet) - A list of vocabulary from the story - Grammar tips Then it is emailed every day around lunch. I need to go back and tweak it, though, because Gemini really likes starting stories off saying that the sky is clear and the sun is shining.
- 3D30497420 1y agoCool! Does Gemini support emailing, or is this handled separately? I've been interested in creating something similar, but haven't devoted the time.
- dustincoates 1y agoIt's done in Lambda; with the email template, script for sending via Resend, and script for packaging for Lambda all done with V0.
- jasfi 1y agoMy own AI agents platform, AI Construx (https://aiconstrux.com https://aiconstrux.com). The MVP should be released in a few weeks time.
- CementToast 1y agoOther than the obvious heavyweights, here are a few others: 1. notebooklm for deep-dive into any document 2. Notion AI for QA on my own documents (works really well) 3. cartesia.ai for very good and cheap audio generation 4. veed.io for automated shorts generation with voiceovers and background imagery 5. zenquery.app for data analysis on my large csv and json files 6. regrowth.so for building my own brand on twitter by copying others 7. syft.ai for news summaries (actually works)
- dismalaf 1y agoI use Google Gemini. Can't say it's super useful but it's only $15/month so worth trying. It's better than search for coding things, the image and video generation is cool for memes I guess. The code it produces is mostly useless but it's ok with concepts.
- nsonha 1y agoI like that it seems to read way more sources than other AI when deep research, but hate that it always assume "research" to mean a verbose report with much filler.
- ghuntley 1y agoAmp aka https://AmpCode.com https://AmpCode.com. I’m one of the core engineers building it - happy to answer any questions. We built Amp with Amp. So I guess I rely on Amp ;)
- defraudbah 1y agoi find grok far superior to chatgpt and copilot, but none of them worth more than $10/m. I am about to switch to agents and pro subscription level because I've heard good feedback about those. AI is perfect at small and easy tasks
- bjord 1y agoare you paying for any of them or only using the free versions? and which models specifically are you using?
- defraudbah 1y agomy contractors provide me paid versions and it's my choice which one to use. Most of the time I use them as a sanity check and autocomplete. Anytime I get to anything complex like writing rust - every AI is useless to different levels PS. Maybe I am a bad example, since I don't even track with model was where. I tick different boxes and see which one works better. In general, not a good experience
- MidoriGlow 1y agocursor ofcourse, the tool I’ve paid most in my career
- rcarmo 1y agoI have an actual rubber duck on my desk, which means I only use AÍ for stuff like “refactor and write tests for this stuff Ducky and I designed”. But I think your question is fundamentally flawed—-we all use AI in phone and editor autocomplete, searching, summarization and whatnot on a daily basis now in office tools. It is using it for actual useful output that counts, and for that it is still below what I deem acceptable.
- rajkumarsekar 1y agoFair point. AI is everywhere now, even when we don’t notice. I was aiming more at tools people actively choose for real output. Love the rubber duck method, by the way!
- chime 1y agoAugment Code (https://www.augmentcode.com/ https://www.augmentcode.com/) extension in VSCode. The remote agent feature is fantastic and the local agent is worth buying credits for. I've tried almost every AI editor (Cursor, Windsurf, Roo/Cline etc.), tried CLI-based coders (Claude Code, Aider, Codex etc.), and have used them all with ton of useful MCPs and in the end, I've had the best results with Augment.
- nsonha 1y agoWarp.dev and VSCode Copilot (I use Cursor et al too it could be any of them). Warp because I can't remember many commands (copilot in the terminal works too but you lose agent mode). They've just release v2 today, looking forwards to try it as a free Claude Code. Looking to switch to Dia or some agentic browser as main driver but at the moment content with Firefox and Grok as the default search engine.
- m3h 1y agoPerplexity - for search (Google replacement), summarization and rewriting, basic research and making presentations (using Perplexity apps) Granola - transcription and meeting notes, searching across notes, recalling action items I've played around extensively with ChatGPT, but Perplexity now covers my use cases. I'm looking to test Claude, primarily because Perplexity does not currently support MCP servers, and I need an assistant who can answer questions across all my work files (Google Drives, Calendar, Slack messages, GitHub, etc.).
- therobot24 1y agoHave you tried google deep research? i'm curious how well perplexity compares to it. I've been using Gemini Deep Research to replace my Google search since it does a web search and provides links you can check yourself to any citation that the resulting report uses.
- rajkumarsekar 1y agoGranola sounds super handy for recall and meeting notes.
- smartmic 1y agoNone that has come with the flood of LLM-based tools. I only use one language translator [1], but it was already of such good quality before the LLM wave that I didn't even notice the change under the bonnet (if there was one at all). [1] https://www.deepl.com/en/translator https://www.deepl.com/en/translator
- hexomancer 1y agoSomething never thought I would say: google AI previews. They actually helped me a lot during Iran's internet shutdown last week. I wrote a blog post about it: https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-internet-2025.html https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/06/20/iran-interne... .
- nunez 1y agodamn; this article triggered my dormant frustration over Google sunsetting Webcache. Unbelievably useful feature that went away kind-of suddenly for weak reasons.
- nicbou 1y agoDeepl Write. It helps me improve my lousy German by showing me a better way to write what I came up with. Google Lens to identify plants. BirdNet is Shazam for birds. ChatGPT for vague questions about everything. I feel like a child asking mom about the world again. It reduced the friction of curiosity. It’s pretty wild that I have a real world Pokedex.
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- walthamstow 1y agoTravelling with ChatGPT is incredible. Translate this Japanese menu into romaji (latin character Japanese) and English. Explain the difference between Turkish yoghurt dishes haydari and cacik. Walking around Manila with voice mode talking me through some basic Tagalog phrases I might need.
- suddenlybananas 1y ago>Explain the difference between Turkish yoghurt dishes haydari and cacik wow something that you can find literally in the second sentence of the wikipedia article for haydari.
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- walthamstow 1y agoAnd the other, vastly more complex, stuff? Btw, it's the third sentence.
- bravesoul2 1y agoRobot vacuum is the most useful for sure.
- rajkumarsekar 1y agoNice! I haven’t tried one yet, but you’re making me curious, might be time to test if AI can finally tackle real-world dust :)
- KingOfCoders 1y agoFor features: Transcript of a Zoom call, ask the LLM what you could do better, how you might be perceived, what the LLM thinks you wanted to achieve (vs. what you really wanted to achieve) etc. Gave me great insights and helps me every day. Self-marketing: Started Marvai this week https://github.com/StephanSchmidt/marvai/ https://github.com/StephanSchmidt/marvai/ as an AI tool for installing useful Claude Code prompts
- theverg 1y agoSurprisingly, many people in this thread use no AI tools at all...
- wordofx 1y agoWow it’s amazing how hacker news which is primarily filled with technology type people has no few using ai or has no idea what they are doing with ai. The saying "Can't see the forest for the trees" really makes a lot of sense now.
- v5v3 1y agoduck.ai Duckduckgo's llm offering with no sign in required and more privacy.
- nunodonato 1y agoNo idea how I missed this one. Thanks, its quite cool!
- dustincoates 1y agoMy company has a specific format for weekly updates, and, frankly, it's a pain to put together. So what I do is I take notes in a doc throughout the week (Obsidian periodic weekly notes) and just send all of it to a custom GPT that creates the update for me. I usually then spend ~10 minutes cleaning it up. I'm generally allergic to having an LLM write for me, but seeing as it _must_ be in the requested template and ChatGPT saves me a couple of hours, I let this case slide.
- nunodonato 1y agoClaude Code. It's so amazing, and not just for code. You can use it for pretty much all kinds of projects. See, for example, this post of a user sharing his automated workflow https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1liylon/were_underrating_claude_code_but_not_how_you_think/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1liylon/were_unde...
- nunodonato 1y agoI have my own personal digital assistant in the form of a telegram bot. Why telegram? Because it is in a group with me, my wife, and the bot. It manages our calendars, reminders, shopping list, and a few other things. When we think of something that might be useful, I add it. It's been great, and because it's on telegram, my wife uses it without issues.
- thisOtterBeGood 1y agoHow does it manage your calendars and shopping lists? Does he just print the events and shopping lists into the chat or does he have access to like a google calendar?
- nunodonato 1y agoIt fetches our calendars from different providers and injects upcoming events in the context. We haven't felt the need to do 2-way sync'ing yet. Reminders and shopping list are fully managed by the AI, they get stored in json files
- mondayblews 1y agothere are a lot of mixed reviews on this tool but chatgpt still is one of my most used ai tools - from work to personal life. i find it helpful to sort of help me make sense of things when i have lots of ideas and unable to structure it I've even used it for emergencies - trying to locate a place while visiting another city and both maps and the place's insta guide failed .. it was pouring down there. (maybe that's why im partial lol) i have also started enjoying notebooklm for contextual content generation gemini - ive tried but it keeps disappointing. currently exploring perplexity
- pdobsan 1y agoThese replies would be more useful if they included the subscription(s) cost.
- madinmo 1y agoclaude code for writing code, chatGPT for everything else (brainstorm ideas or writing down documentation) and Cringe Guard (https://github.com/pankajtanwarbanna/cringe-guard https://github.com/pankajtanwarbanna/cringe-guard - i've built this one to avoid cringe content on my feed)
- exiguus 1y ago- postgress/pgvector and ollama in a jupyter notebooks[1] to search my documents/projects and other data - Mistral as search engine and for natural language processing (mostly summaries of something) - Co-Pilot, mostly as autocomplete and sometimes to ask questions or let it write tests or do refactoring - AWS AI Services to create tasks, tickets and stories from templates in JIRA or YouTrack. - Github/Co-Pilot and Gitlab/snyk for code review and security analysis in PRs [1] basically https://github.com/roskakori/wolkenlose-ki-fuer-zu-hause/tree/main https://github.com/roskakori/wolkenlose-ki-fuer-zu-hause/tre... and now i try also https://github.com/ggozad/haiku.rag https://github.com/ggozad/haiku.rag
- eddyg 1y agoVSCode with Copilot using Claude Sonnet 4 as the model, running in Agent mode.
- irthomasthomas 1y agoIs there a way to have that run automatically where it does not require clicking continue each turn?
- eddyg 1y agoSee https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/chat/chat-agent-mode#_manage-tool-approvals https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/chat/chat-agent-m...
- incomingpain 1y agoTabs open right now: Chatgpt, claude, and grok. Local LLM: deepseek r1 and qwen2.5coder; phi4 for my project. Pycharm pro as my main IDE. I <3 pycharm. I have been giving Void IDE a try this week but it's just frustrating me more than anything. Has to be a bug where when i approve it to edit the file and it reads maybe 5 lines, stops, still says its running but isnt doing anything. then the chat keeps going like an error happened; but then it really errors out. I'm not ruling out that im just screwing it up somewhere.
- doe88 1y agoI'm not the most versant AI user so far, I was wondering, what is currently the best tool for asking math questions (lessons, proofs, examples) ?
- funkattack 1y agoCurrent workflow that might stick: I’m using SuperWhisper for voice dictation and casually chatting with Claude Code, which I just start in the Obsidian vault directory. I’m currently onboarding into a new project and need to gather and structure information quickly. So I just jot down whatever comes to mind — in natural language, no structure. Claude takes care of organizing it: generating #tags, creating [[links]], and making things retrievable later. After a couple of weeks, I can ask things like: • What did I do yesterday? • Who is “John Doe”? • Which project uses Java version 21? • … Happy to share more if anyone’s curious. (English reviewed with a bit of help from ChatGPT — non-native speaker here.)
- ionflux 1y agoplease do!
- nzach 1y agoI'm experimenting with a somewhat similar workflow. I have a Boox tablet I use to take handwritten notes on any relevant topics during the day. And with that I create the following workflow: 1. transform handwritten notes into a markdown document using chatgpt 2. with this document I ask chatgpt to create a summary of yesterdays activities and a list of unfinished things I still need to work on today. This approach isn't perfect but is surprisingly useful.
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- treetalker 1y agoKagi Translate. Kagi Summarizer (via bookmarklet) to help weed out articles that won't be worth reading (even here on HN) or to get the one sentence that matters. Kagi Assistant. This I use for random things, like pasting a webpage's source and having it figure out what to fill in on this form to make an RSS feed where none exists.[1] (This, in my current push to move most of my needed information updates both out of email and into RSS, as well as to reverse what I call "the arrow of information" [I want to batch-check information updates on a schedule instead of getting interrupted by incoming data piecemeal].) Kagi Assistant (and the various LLM models) are also great when I realize that I don't understand a particular grammar or usage point in a foreign language that I'm learning: the models usually create clear explanations and then a few practice exercises for me to do. [1]: https://feedmaker.fly.dev/ https://feedmaker.fly.dev/
- nunez 1y agoI don't use any generative AI tools at the moment (I don't even have autocomplete enabled on my phones; I'm a caveman, I know), but I use Tesla FSD, Cornell Merlin Bird ID and have robot vacuums and stuff at home.
- dSebastien 1y agoNotebookLM to explore sources in bulk, prepare vacations etc Claude Code for coding and as basis for my AI assistant/ghostwriter (productivity, planning, prioritization, writing articles, newsletters, social media posts, etc Gemini & Sora for images, also replicate and Flux (much less now) Veo 3 for video (tests) code2prompt to create AI Mega prompts out of my notes LM Studio and ollama for local LLMs Dockmaster for installing/running MCP servers. Hopefully soon Desktop Extensions Various Obsidian extensions for AI Oh and tons more stuff