What are the 5 tools you simply couldn't do your work without?
This could be related to your industry, or even a side project you're working on.
Here are my 5 (I couldn't function without them):
Grammarly – proofreading my texts, not just posts, but also client communication
ChatGPT / Claude – mostly brainstorming, help with copy, and summarising
Figma – I can put the basic graphics together quickly.
Translator – sounds incredibly old-school, but English is not my mother tongue
Gmail – and not only for communication, but also for storing ideas and sending myself email reminders for posts
[and soon one more that I am working on – SafeLimit – prevents me from being banned on LinkedIn, so I will not lose my account.]
What are your five?
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the 5 I genuinely can't work without:
Claude - strategy docs, client decks, code reviews, first drafts. Honestly replaced half my toolkit.
Gmail - boring answer but more than a decade consulting means my entire professional life runs through it
Loom - async communication with clients across timezones, saves hours every week
LinkedIn - for someone who does both consulting and building, it's where the work comes from
MuntLab (shameless plug- it's mine 😄) - built it because I couldn't find a finance tracker that didn't want my bank login. Drop in a CSV from your Dutch bank, see exactly where your money goes. Data stays on your device. muntlab.com if curious
Honourable mention: a good coffee machine. Non-negotiable.
My five, building Naxely:
Claude – not just code, but actual review/judgment calls (catching real bugs before they ship, not just generating code)
OpenCode – implementation agent, does the actual coding while Claude reviews
Cursor/VS Code – obviously
Render + Vercel – deploy and forget, cold-start keepalive via cron-job.org
Supabase – auth, db, storage in one place, saves so much glue code
What's surprised me is how much "AI as reviewer" matters more than "AI as generator" — most of my actual bug catches this week came from making Claude double-check OpenCode's work, not from either one alone.
Claude Code(duh)
GitHub - how did people handle version control before git?!
Proton - best business suite in my opinion. Security first!
Google Cloud - I use their kubernetes engine(GKE) every day for testing PandoCore
Some kind of terminal
The five tools I simply could not do my work without are:
My laptop
It is the centre of everything I do, from managing Citywide Security Company and Citywide Cleaning Company to writing content, reviewing contracts, preparing quotations, and overseeing website projects.
ChatGPT and other AI tools
AI helps me research ideas, refine business communications, develop SEO content, review technical work, create proposals, and move projects forward much faster.
WordPress
Most of my websites, service pages, landing pages, and articles are managed through WordPress. It is essential for publishing content, improving conversions, and building the online visibility of my companies.
Google Search Console and SEO tools
These tools allow me to monitor indexing, rankings, crawl issues, keywords, and website performance. As an SEO professional, I rely on data rather than guesswork.
Google Workspace
Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Calendar help me communicate with clients, manage leads, prepare documents, organise projects, and keep the different parts of my businesses running efficiently.
Together, these tools help me operate as a business owner, copywriter, SEO specialist, and marketer without losing control of the details.
ChatGPT
Ngrok
Verbatim
Vscode
Claude
(& Powerpoint LOL)
This resonates – we have three in common! Here's mine:
GPT/Claude – I even use them to polish my own writing sometimes
Gmail & other comms tools – daily essentials
Translator – for similar reasons
Canva – great for quick visuals
Still looking – open to suggestions!
Here are my 5 (I couldn't function without them):
Grammarly – for client communication
ChatGPT – mostly brainstorming
Adobe Creative Suite – It's my entire life
YouTube Music – I can't function without listening to music.
Honor of Kings (MOBA Game) - I need to play a game whenever I am experiencing creative blocks.
Mine changed completely over the last year:
Claude Code (the biggest shift by far)
Claude / ChatGPT
Vercel
AWS
Sticky notes 🙂
The last one always surprises people, but I still think best with pen and paper. AI writes a lot of my code now, but my first product ideas usually start as messy sketches on sticky notes. Funny how the oldest tool survived the AI era.
Mine are research-heavy and pretty unglamorous:
NotebookLM - grounding answers in my own sources instead of letting a model guess
Claude - reasoning through a dense paper or an ugly first draft
Zotero - the reference library everything else points back to
Obsidian - where half-formed notes actually connect over months
Readwise - so highlights don't die inside whatever app I read them in
Reading this thread, the "tools that disappear vs. tools that turn you into the glue" point really lands for me. My stack is powerful but the seams between capturing a source, reading it, and synthesising are exactly where I lose time. I've ended up building a small workspace layer on top of NotebookLM just to stop copy-pasting sources around by hand. The tools that keep a permanent spot are the ones that quietly kill a step, not add one.
Dial
Mine as a CTO running a small team:
Claude Code - basically pair programming with someone who never gets tired of my questions
Linear - the only project tracker that hasn't made me want to switch tools in years
Cursor - for the stuff that needs deeper editing than a chat window
Notion - all our internal docs and specs live here, imperfect but nothing better has replaced it
Slack - unavoidable, love/hate relationship
Curious how many people here have fully replaced their note taking app with an AI native one at this point, feels like that category is churning the most for me lately.