I spend a stupid amount of time testing AI tools. Most of them are free, half-broken, and forgotten within a week. So when I saw this list from a LinkedIn creator, my first reaction was skeptical. Then I read it properly.
The original poster didn’t just dump 13 links. Every pick on the list is a paid tool that solves one specific problem better than anything free. That’s the filter that makes this list actually useful. No “here are 50 AI tools” nonsense. Thirteen tools, thirteen jobs.
Here’s the full list from the author, with my take on why each one earns its spot.
🧠 The thinking and research layer
- Claude.ai for solving complex problems. This is the one you open when the task has too many moving parts to hold in your head. Long documents, messy logic, code that needs untangling.
- Grok.com for research with real-time news. Most chatbots have a knowledge cutoff. This one’s plugged into what’s happening right now, which matters when you’re writing about anything current.
- Notebooklm.google.com for chatting with your sources. Upload your PDFs, research papers, meeting notes, then ask questions. It answers from YOUR documents instead of guessing.
The pattern here: each tool has a different relationship with information. One reasons, one fetches, one grounds itself in what you give it. Picking the wrong one for the job is why people think AI “doesn’t work.”
✍️ The capture and writing layer
- Granola.ai so you never take notes again. It sits in your meetings and writes the notes for you. The pitch that got me: you stay present in the conversation instead of typing.
- Wisprflow.ai for writing with your voice. You talk, it types. Most people speak roughly three times faster than they type, so this is a genuine speed unlock for anyone who drafts a lot.
🎨 The creative layer
- Suno.ai for composing music with AI. Background tracks for videos, jingles, whatever you need without licensing headaches.
- Gamma.app for creating presentations. Type your outline, get a designed deck. This is the tool I’d hand to anyone who dreads slide formatting.
- Canva.com for designing graphics. The AI features got quietly excellent, and it stays the fastest path from idea to finished visual for non-designers.
- Seedance2.app for generating AI videos. Video generation moved fast, and this is the expert’s pick for it.
- ChatGPT.com for creating realistic images. Worth noting what the creator did here: he lists ChatGPT specifically for images, not for chat. That’s a sharp call.
- ElevenLabs.io for AI voice cloning. Narration, audiobooks, dubbing your content into other languages. The output quality is unsettling in the best way.
⚙️ The build layer
- Shortcut.ai for building spreadsheets with AI. Describe the model you want, get the formulas. Anyone who’s ever fought with nested VLOOKUP knows why this matters.
- Code.claude.com for building anything with prompts. You describe what you want built, it writes and runs the code. This is the biggest shift on the list for people who don’t code.
How to actually use a list like this
Don’t sign up for all 13. That’s how you end up paying $400 a month for tools you opened twice. Here’s a saner approach:
- Pick your bottleneck first. What eats the most time in your week? Notes? Slides? Drafting? Start there.
- Trial one tool for a full week. Not a day. A week. Real usage reveals whether it fits your workflow or just demos well.
- Cancel ruthlessly. If you didn’t open it three times in that week, it’s not a keeper.
- Stack by function, not by hype. Two tools that do the same job is wasted money. Two tools that cover different steps is a system.
Why this list reads differently
Most tool roundups optimize for length. More tools, more clicks. What I like about this contributor’s approach is the discipline of one tool per job. Notes, voice, music, slides, graphics, video, images, spreadsheets, code, sources. Ten distinct problems, thirteen answers.
There’s also a bigger signal in here. Two years ago most of these categories didn’t have a serious AI option at all. Now each one has a paid product good enough that people happily hand over money. That’s the real story underneath the list.
📤 Save this one. As the author put it, it might help you one day.
Go check the original LinkedIn post for the full list and the discussion in the comments. Worth a look.