I was recently talking with a group of founders, and we went around sharing tools we're using now. Posting my notes for our community here - would love to know what else people are using!

Voice AI toolkit:

- Vapi

We ve just shipped some big updates to the Layercode private beta:

Redesigned Dashboard UI

Remember when products designed for consumers unexpectedly revolutionized how businesses operate? For example, Discord started as a chat app for gamers but is now essential for remote teams.

Its journey from gaming-focused platform to business tool is fascinating:

• Originally built for gamers needing low-latency communication

• Features like server organization, voice channels, and role permissions were perfect for gaming

• Discord thrived during the pandemic as businesses discovered its community-building strengths worked brilliantly for remote collaboration

• Now powers everything from customer communities to virtual events

For the past 10 years, whenever I needed to call an international number, I used Skype. It had my back when I had to clear things up with the US university admissions from Austria, arrange a hotel pickup in Bali, or call my EU bank to see why my card was blocked while I was trekking through Argentina. I could call anywhere in the world for cents, and it was delightful.

In February 2025, Microsoft announced it was closing Skype down, and on May 5 it officially stopped operations. I was really sad when I heard the news with Skype, a huge chunk of my life disappeared. It felt the same way as if, one day, nobody would be playing on Call of Duty 2 servers anymore (that hasn t happened yet, right?).

Anyway, here I ve compiled a list of the top 6 alternatives to Skype for international calling. I used the following criteria to select them:

Real-time voice AI is young, and the tools and infrastructure that will power its future are being built right now.

After working with and speaking to hundreds of teams building voice AI agents, we ve learned a lot.

Google released a lot of updates at its annual I/O conference.

One of them, which has been a success, is 3D video conferencing (it reminds me a bit of the era when 3D movies were a big boom in 2009). So I assume that we may soon see 4D and 5D experiences.

I'm looking for tools to help me brief clients and get their answers in voice format. Recently, I found @Yapz It really impressed me. Simple to use, the delightful format of briefing people, only a positive experience. The only downside is that I cannot see the whole call transcript, which is crucial for me. Are there any free/cheap AI alternatives that makes summaries of answers and saves transcripts at the same time?

Here's my hacked-together, messy, voice-based dev environment:

1. Voice-driven loop with screen-shotting so the LLM in the loop can see what's in my terminal and editor. The prompt varies depending on what I'm trying to drive with this loop.

2. A few tool definitions that give read access to files and URLs.

3. A tool the LLM can send a block of output to that generates keyboard events, so the LLM can drive any editor/terminal.

4. A separate process watching a directory and constantly making LLM-driven git commits. (git autosave).

I have some pieces of this running most of the time. But I'm lazy, and doing other stuff, and I also try to use a variety of editors and tools, to see what's good lately. Which ... no stability, so my hacked-together stuff is always broken.

I don't want to replace @Windsurf / @Cursor / Claude code. A seriously good agent and expert-system dev toolkit is a lot of work.

Here's my hacked-together, messy, voice-based dev environment:

1. Voice-driven loop with screen-shotting so the LLM in the loop can see what's in my terminal and editor. The prompt varies depending on what I'm trying to drive with this loop.

2. A few tool definitions that give read access to files and URLs.

3. A tool the LLM can send a block of output to that generates keyboard events, so the LLM can drive any editor/terminal.

4. A separate process watching a directory and constantly making LLM-driven git commits. (git autosave).

I have some pieces of this running most of the time. But I'm lazy, and doing other stuff, and I also try to use a variety of editors and tools, to see what's good lately. Which ... no stability, so my hacked-together stuff is always broken.

I don't want to replace @Windsurf / @Cursor / Claude code. A seriously good agent and expert-system dev toolkit is a lot of work.