AI Tools Directory
Original, plain-English write-ups of well-known AI tools — what each one actually does, who it's for, and where it falls short. Nobody pays to be listed, and links go to each tool's official site.
Deciding between two specific tools? The head-to-head comparisons cover the differences that actually change the decision.
Showing 20 of 20 tools
ChatGPT
A general-purpose AI chat assistant from OpenAI. You type a request in plain English and it responds with text — explanations, drafts, summaries, or code — based on the conversation so far.
Last updated:
Claude
An AI chat assistant from Anthropic, built for long-form writing, careful reasoning, and working with large documents or codebases in a single conversation.
Last updated:
Midjourney
An AI image generator that turns a written description into original artwork. Popular for stylized, artistic, and highly detailed image output.
Last updated:
GitHub Copilot
An AI coding assistant that suggests code completions and can generate whole functions directly inside your code editor, based on the surrounding code and comments.
Last updated:
Notion AI
An AI writing and summarization feature built into the Notion workspace app, used for drafting, editing, and condensing notes and documents you already keep in Notion.
Last updated:
Perplexity
An AI-powered answer engine that searches the web and responds with a summarized answer alongside cited sources, rather than a plain list of links.
Last updated:
ElevenLabs
A text-to-speech and voice AI platform that converts written text into realistic spoken audio in a range of voices and languages.
Last updated:
Runway
An AI video generation and editing platform that can create short video clips from text or images, and offers AI-assisted video editing tools.
Last updated:
Gemini
Google's AI chat assistant, built into Google's own apps (Search, Docs, Gmail) as well as available as a standalone chatbot, with a strong focus on multimodal input like images and documents.
Last updated:
DALL-E (Legacy Models)
OpenAI's legacy image-generation models. DALL-E 2 and DALL-E 3 were removed from the API on May 12, 2026; consult the current image-model catalog for new projects.
Last updated:
Grammarly
A writing assistant that checks grammar, clarity, and tone as you type, with AI features for rewriting and adjusting tone, built as a browser extension and app rather than a chat interface.
Last updated:
DeepL
An AI translation tool known for producing more natural-sounding translations than older machine translation tools, supporting dozens of languages for both text and full documents.
Last updated:
Cursor
A code editor with AI built into its core — it can write, edit, and explain code across your whole project, not just autocomplete single lines. Built on the same foundation as VS Code, so it feels familiar to most developers.
Last updated:
NotebookLM
Google's research assistant that answers questions using only the documents you upload — your PDFs, notes, and links — instead of the open internet. Answers cite the exact passages they came from, which makes them easy to verify.
Last updated:
Suno
An AI music generator: describe a song in words — genre, mood, topic — and it produces a complete track with vocals and instruments. You can also write your own lyrics and have Suno set them to music.
Last updated:
Canva Magic Studio
The AI feature set inside Canva, the popular design tool — generate images from text, remove backgrounds, expand photos, rewrite copy, and turn a description into a draft design, all within Canva's drag-and-drop editor.
Last updated:
Otter.ai
An AI meeting assistant that joins your calls, transcribes them in real time, and produces summaries with action items. Works with common meeting platforms and keeps a searchable archive of past conversations.
Last updated:
Zapier
An automation platform that connects the apps you already use — when something happens in one app, Zapier makes something happen in another, no coding required. Its AI features let you describe an automation in plain English and draft workflows that include AI steps.
Last updated:
n8n
A workflow automation platform where you connect apps and services visually, with steps that can call AI models and act on their output. It can be used as a hosted service or run on your own infrastructure, which matters if you need the workflow and its data to stay on hardware you control.
Last updated:
Claude Code
Anthropic's coding assistant, which runs as a command-line program alongside your project rather than as a panel inside an editor. You describe what you want changed and it reads the codebase, edits files, and runs commands, asking for approval on anything you have not already allowed.
Last updated:
No tools match that combination of filters yet.
What this directory covers
The written guidance on this site — the courses, prompts, and most articles — is about text-based work: writing, research, summarizing, coding, and automation. The image, video, and audio tools listed here are described on their own terms, but they are not yet backed by a course or a prompt collection. That is a gap we know about rather than one we are hiding; those listings should be read as independent descriptions, not as part of a learning path.
Questions about this directory
How tools get here, what the listings can tell you, and what you should check yourself before committing to anything.
- How do you decide which AI tools to include?
- Selection is independent and unpaid: no product has bought a listing, and every write-up is written here rather than supplied by the company. Preference goes to tools a non-technical person can actually get started with, that are used widely enough to be worth explaining, and where there is something honest to say about the limits as well as the strengths.
- Is the pricing information here up to date?
- Treat it as a rough guide rather than a quote. Plans, free-tier limits, and regional availability change without notice, and this directory is not updated the moment a company changes something. Every listing links to the product's official site, so check the current price there before deciding anything — particularly when cost is the deciding factor for you.
- Which AI tool is the best one?
- There is no ranking here, and that is deliberate. Best depends on what you are doing, what your organization permits, and what you find pleasant to use, none of which a directory can know about you. A more reliable approach is to pick the two closest to your task, read the limitations sections carefully, then try both on real work for a week.
- Can I use these AI tools for free?
- Many have a free tier, and each listing says which. Free usually means limits: fewer messages, slower responses, smaller uploads, or older models. Those limits tend to appear exactly when a task gets long, which is when they are most annoying. For occasional use they are often enough, so confirm the free version really falls short before paying for anything.
- Why is the tool I use not listed here?
- Most likely because it has not been written up yet. This directory is compiled by one person and grows gradually, so plenty of capable products are still missing from it. Absence is not a verdict on quality. Suggestions sent through the contact page genuinely shape what gets added next, especially for tools that are popular but rarely covered in English-language write-ups.