Live updated 4 min ago Issue № 142 · April 18 Tracking 428 tools · 24 vendors

The AI signal.
Not the noise.

Curated intelligence on the tools shaping work in 2026. Toolkits people use, leaderboards that update weekly, head-to-head comparisons, pricing notes, tutorials — written by people who actually ship with this stuff.

Browse this week's stacks See model leaderboard

Tools tracked

Builders reading

Weekly issues

Editors curating

Live now 247 readers on the site right now 1,892 comparisons read today 62 pricing changes logged this month 14 new tools reviewed this week 9 articles published this week 247 readers on the site right now 1,892 comparisons read today 62 pricing changes logged this month 14 new tools reviewed this week 9 articles published this week

The Pulse trending · this hour

4D Fireflies.ai — Fireflies competes with Otter for meeting +412% 4D Beautiful.ai — Beautiful.ai uses design rules to auto-format +218% 4D Otter.ai — Otter joins your meetings (Zoom, Meet, +892% 4D Tome — Tome pivoted from general AI decks +156% 4D Napkin AI — Napkin turns text into infographics, -22% 4D Perplexity Pages — Perplexity Pages transforms a search -48% 4D Resemble AI — Resemble is the enterprise alternative +88% 4D Fireflies.ai — Fireflies competes with Otter for meeting +412% 4D Beautiful.ai — Beautiful.ai uses design rules to auto-format +218% 4D Otter.ai — Otter joins your meetings (Zoom, Meet, +892% 4D Tome — Tome pivoted from general AI decks +156% 4D Napkin AI — Napkin turns text into infographics, -22% 4D Perplexity Pages — Perplexity Pages transforms a search -48% 4D Resemble AI — Resemble is the enterprise alternative +88%

Curated Stacks

What these people
actually use.

Toolkits documented from the work of people we've talked to — bloggers, indie devs, designers, marketers. Each entry lists the 4–6 tools they reach for and roughly what it costs. Reference, not prescription.

See all 14 stacks

Stack of the week

The YouTuber's
AI workshop

Script with Claude. B-roll with Sora. Edit with Descript. Voice-over via ElevenLabs. Thumbnails in Midjourney. Full pipeline, $89/mo, used by 40+ channels we know.

CL So Ds 11 MJ

From $89/mo total · 5 tools

Bloggers · Writers

Long-form, faster

Outline → draft → polish — without the AI mush. Claude + Grammarly + Surfer + Notion.

CL Gr Sf Nt

From $54/mo · 4 tools

Indie developers

Ship a SaaS in a week

Cursor for code, v0 for UI, Supabase for backend, Resend for email, Stripe for money.

Cs v0 Sb Re St

From $120/mo · 5 tools

Solo founders

Run a 7-figure business solo

From customer support to content to ops — automate the boring 80% so you can focus on the 20% that ships growth.

CL In Zp Mk No

From $210/mo · 5 tools

Designers

Concept to delivery

MJ for moodboards, Figma AI for layout, Galileo for first drafts, Magnific for upscale.

MJ Fg Ga Mg

From $96/mo · 4 tools

Marketers

Campaign in 3 hours

Jasper + HeyGen + Canva AI + Typefully — copy, video, visuals, distribution.

Js HG Cv Tf

From $74/mo · 4 tools

More: Lawyers Real estate Teachers Etsy sellers Authors Travel creators

Frontier model leaderboard

The benchmark.
Updated weekly.

Composite scores from MMLU, HumanEval, MATH, ARC-AGI-2, plus our own real-world coding & writing tests. Click any model for the full breakdown and trace logs.

Methodology

Model

Coding

Writing

Reasoning

Speed

$/1M

The shape of each frontier model.

The leaderboard tells you who wins. The radar tells you why. Hover any model below to highlight its profile.

Claude Opus 4.7 566 / 600

GPT-5 559 / 600

Gemini 2.5 Ultra 552 / 600

Llama 4 Behemoth 541 / 600

Head-to-head

Pick a winner.
We did the work.

Six tools, four hours of testing each, real prompts pulled from real workflows. No vendor talking points.

All 84 comparisons

For coders

Cs vs Co

Cursor 2.0 vs GitHub Copilot

12 min read See verdict

For chat

A vs O

Claude vs ChatGPT (April)

18 min read See verdict

For images

MJ vs D3

Midjourney v7 vs DALL-E 4

9 min read See verdict

For music

Su vs Ud

Suno v4 vs Udio v2

11 min read See verdict

For video

Rw vs So

Runway Gen-4 vs Sora

14 min read See verdict

For research

Px vs O

Perplexity vs ChatGPT Search

10 min read See verdict

Cursor — Essential for coders

Cursor is a fork of VS Code rebuilt around LLMs. The killer feature is codebase awareness — it indexes your entire repo so AI suggestions actually understand your project. Composer mode lets you describe a multi-file change in English; Cursor edits every relevant file at once. For refactors, greenfield features,…

Read the full review

Best-for guides

If you only need
one tool, get this one.

Eight focused buyer's guides — one tool category each, three picks (best overall, best free, best budget), and an honest reason behind each.

All AI tools

Tutorials & how-to

Build something this weekend.

No 30-minute YouTube intros. Hand-written, screenshot-heavy walkthroughs by the editors who actually ran the experiments.

Tutorial archive

YouTube · Pipeline 32 min read

How to make a YouTube video with AI in 30 minutes — script, B-roll, voice, edit

A complete pipeline using Claude, Sora, ElevenLabs, and Descript. Every prompt, every setting, no hand-waving.

Denys K · Editor

April 14 · Featured

Voice 12 min

Clone your voice with ElevenLabs in under 10 minutes

What "good source audio" actually means, and three settings 90% of people skip.

Maria R · Audio

April 11

SaaS 48 min

Build a SaaS in a weekend with Lovable + Cursor

From "I want a todo app for designers" to live on Stripe — including the bits no tutorial covers.

Jaden T · Eng

April 9

Worth knowing · pricing changes

What changed in pricing
this week.

Plain notes on tools that adjusted their plans recently. No countdowns, no urgency — just the numbers, so you know before you renew.

Full pricing log

Cursor Pro –50% intro

First six months are now half price on the annual plan. Standard rate after that.

^$10/mo

$20

Intro window closes mid-May

Read our review

Jasper Lifetime tier

Jasper introduced a one-time Creator plan at $299. Limited to the first 100 accounts on the program.

^$299

$960/yr

About half the seats remain

Read our review

Synthesia Free month

Synthesia opened a 30-day Personal trial with no card required. Useful if you've been curious about avatar video.

^$0/30d

$22

Ongoing trial program

Read our review

Magnific –40% intro

Magnific is running a 40% discount on the first three months of the Premium plan. Standard pricing resumes after.

^$23/mo

$39

Intro window, no fixed end date

Read our review

Interactive

Two small tools
to think with.

Not sales props — just two interactive widgets we use ourselves to understand the tradeoffs. Drag the slider, or answer five questions and see what comes up.

All interactive tools

Tradeoff estimator

What Cursor changes for a team this size

Drag the slider to see the rough hours-saved math at our measured 31% productivity uplift. Useful for thinking about scale, not a buying argument.

Devs 8

$24,800

Estimated value · per quarter

Open the full version

Workflow finder · 5 questions

Which tools fit the way you work?

Tell us what you ship most. We'll point to the toolkits other people in similar workflows reach for — not to push a purchase, just to narrow the search.

Suggested → Indie devs · Cursor + v0 + Supabase

Take the full quiz

Tracking + comparing every major AI vendor

OpenAI Anthropic Google DeepMind Mistral Meta AI xAI Perplexity Cohere Stability AI Hugging Face OpenAI Anthropic Google DeepMind Mistral Meta AI xAI

Power user? Press H for hardcore mode

What these peopleactually use.

The YouTuber'sAI workshop

Long-form, faster

Ship a SaaS in a week

Run a 7-figure business solo

Concept to delivery

Campaign in 3 hours

The benchmark.Updated weekly.

The shape of each frontier model.

Pick a winner.We did the work.

Cursor 2.0 vs GitHub Copilot

Claude vs ChatGPT (April)

Midjourney v7 vs DALL-E 4

Suno v4 vs Udio v2

Runway Gen-4 vs Sora

Perplexity vs ChatGPT Search

Cursor — Essential for coders

If you only needone tool, get this one.

Best AI for Writing

Best AI for Coding

Best AI for Image Generators

Best AI for Video Generators

Best AI for Voice & Audio Tools

Best AI for Research Tools

Best AI for Free AI Tools

Best AI for Tools for Productivity

Build something this weekend.

How to make a YouTube video with AI in 30 minutes — script, B-roll, voice, edit

Clone your voice with ElevenLabs in under 10 minutes

Build a SaaS in a weekend with Lovable + Cursor

What changed in pricingthis week.

Two small toolsto think with.

What Cursor changes for a team this size

Which tools fit the way you work?

The week in AI,once a week.

Cursor 2.0: what changed, and what it means for the dev stack.

What these people
actually use.

The YouTuber's
AI workshop

The benchmark.
Updated weekly.

Pick a winner.
We did the work.

If you only need
one tool, get this one.

What changed in pricing
this week.

Two small tools
to think with.

The week in AI,
once a week.