HN Explorer

Ask HN: What useful AI tools do you use every day?

42 points by rajkumarsekar ↗ HN
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.

84 comments

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yogini
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.

mcwhy
everything thats wrong with The Internet in one comment
yogini
why do you think so
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jajko
If it works it ain't stupid (or wrong). I can imagine dozens of setups where such tools can bring massive velocity in small/single man team, ie indie/mobile game development
hn_throw2025
Your 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
How’s your experience been with Cursor compared to GitHub Copilot?
zormino
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.
flowerthoughts
Isn't Claude (i.e. general LLM) enough? I seem to have luck having it interpret datasheet PDFs for me.
Frieren
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).

3D30497420
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.
dustincoates
I 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
Cool! Does Gemini support emailing, or is this handled separately? I've been interested in creating something similar, but haven't devoted the time.
dustincoates
It's done in Lambda; with the email template, script for sending via Resend, and script for packaging for Lambda all done with V0.
CementToast
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)

dismalaf
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.
nsonha
I 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
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 ;)
darqis
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.

defraudbah
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
bjord
are you paying for any of them or only using the free versions? and which models specifically are you using?
defraudbah
my 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
cursor ofcourse, the tool I’ve paid most in my career
rcarmo
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.

rajkumarsekar
Fair 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
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.
nsonha
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.

m3h
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.).

therobot24
Have 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
Granola sounds super handy for recall and meeting notes.
smartmic
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

hexomancer
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... .
nunez
damn; this article triggered my dormant frustration over Google sunsetting Webcache. Unbelievably useful feature that went away kind-of suddenly for weak reasons.
nicbou
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.

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walthamstow
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.
suddenlybananas
>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
And the other, vastly more complex, stuff?

Btw, it's the third sentence.

suddenlybananas
Haydari is a type of yogurt dish similar to a thick cacık, made from certain herbs and spices, combined with garlic and yogurt.[1] It differs from cacık in that the recipe contains no cucumber and calls for strained yogurt or labne.[2]

it is in the second sentence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haydari

walthamstow
The third sentence is where it tells me how they taste different and what they are ordered for (meze vs accompaniment) which is what I wanted.

My answer from ChatGPT was much better, and I didn't have to gamble on it being in the Wikipedia article, or which one to search for (cacik has nothing).

So, anyway, about that other complex stuff?

suddenlybananas
I just think you're impressed by stuff which was already available and portraying it as stuff that is through chatgpt. Like a Tagalog phrasebook? That's been around a long long time.
walthamstow
Everything in an LLM was already available, that's how they work.

Short of hiring a human, there has never been a phrasebook I can talk to out loud and it talk back. That's what I did that day in Manila, earbuds in, walking and talking, acting out scenarios like ordering food in Tagalog with the assistant.

nsonha
> literally in the second sentence of the wikipedia article for haydarI and cacim

It's impressive that you know where things are and how long it take to find the infomation even BEFORE hitting search, trully.

rajkumarsekar
That’s an awesome use case, feels like having a multilingual travel buddy in your pocket.
bravesoul2
Robot vacuum is the most useful for sure.
rajkumarsekar
Nice! 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
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

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