1. 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.

Goblin.tools

NotebookLLM. 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.

None 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).

Claude.ai + Claude Code + Overlay(https://overlay.one) The last one is built by me, a tool to interact with websites.

I’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.

My own AI agents platform, AI Construx (https://aiconstrux.com). The MVP should be released in a few weeks time.

Other 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)

I 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.

Amp aka 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 ;)

None.

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.

i 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

cursor ofcourse, the tool I’ve paid most in my career

I 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.

Augment Code (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.

Warp.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.

Perplexity - 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.).

None 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

Something 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-interne... .

Deepl 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.

Travelling 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.

Robot vacuum is the most useful for sure.

For 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/ as an AI tool for installing useful Claude Code prompts

Surprisingly, many people in this thread use no AI tools at all...

Wow 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.

duck.ai

Duckduckgo's llm offering with no sign in required and more privacy.

My 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.