The best AI tools that actually work.
Most "best AI tools" lists are SEO sludge — affiliate-baited roundups of products nobody actually paid for. This is the stack we personally use to run a portfolio of publications, ranked by what we'd pay for ourselves.
Pick #1 (Claude) if you do serious thinking, writing, or coding — it's the most capable model we've worked with. Pick #2 (Beehiiv) if you're starting a newsletter, full stop. Pick #3 (Make) for non-technical automation. Pick #4 (Gemini) if you need cheap high-volume LLM calls. Pick #5 (Lindy) for autonomous agents. Pick #6 (Cloudflare Pages) for hosting that costs $0 at small scale.
Claude (Anthropic)
The model we do all serious thinking and writing with. Claude Code (the CLI) is the highest-leverage developer tool we've used in years — it ships real work in real codebases, not just snippets.
- Best-in-class for long-context tasks
- Claude Code CLI changes how solo devs ship
- Honest about uncertainty
- No public affiliate program (we recommend it anyway)
- API pricing adds up at scale
Beehiiv
affiliateWhat runs The Colophon. Free up to 2,500 subs, custom domain on the free tier, real subscriber analytics, native referral program. Switched from Resend (which is great but not built for publishing).
- Custom domain on the free plan (rare)
- Real publication features (referrals, segments)
- Editor that doesn't fight you
- Custom sender domain is paid-tier only
- Smaller deliverability network than ConvertKit
Make.com
affiliateMore powerful than Zapier per dollar and the visual debugger is best-in-class. Replaces a contractor for repetitive ops once you learn the iterator + aggregator pattern. Pair with n8n if you need code escape hatches.
- Generous free tier
- Visual debugger that shows what failed
- Massive integration library
- Heavier than Zapier for trivial flows
- Less agentic than Lindy
Gemini 2.5 Flash (Google AI Studio)
Free tier is genuinely usable (250 requests/day). We migrated all our SEO content pipeline off OpenRouter onto direct Gemini and saved real money for zero quality loss. Same model on both routes.
- Free at the volume most builders need
- Latency is competitive with paid alternatives
- Strong at structured output
- Not as good as Claude for nuanced editorial work
- Free tier rate limits hit fast at scale
Lindy.ai
affiliateThe most polished agent-builder we've used. Templates work out of the box, calendar/email/CRM integrations are real, debugging is conversational. Skip if you want full code control — use n8n instead.
- Templates work without rewiring
- Native integrations with Google, Slack, HubSpot, Linear
- Conversational debugging
- Limited control vs. code-first frameworks
- Pricing scales with task volume
Cloudflare Pages
Free tier covers everything most operators need. The 13 sites we run cost $0/month to host. No real alternative at this price-to-performance ratio. Pair with their Workers for serverless and you have a complete platform.
- Truly free at small scale
- Global CDN included
- Workers + Pages + KV in one platform
- Build minutes capped on free tier
- Slightly more setup than Vercel
Real workloads, not vendor demos.
Every tool above earns a place by being something we already pay for and use weekly. We built and ship work with each one — no demo videos, no rewritten press releases, no vendor briefings.
Full evaluation rubric is on the methodology page. If a vendor offered free credits in exchange for a positive review, we said no.
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The Colophon — one tool, every Sunday.