The Primer.
Everything else on this site is built for organizations. This one is built for you. How you think is the most valuable thing you own, so this is a guide for exploring these tools constructively, consciously, and critically.
Expert lens → plain language
Your thinking is always the authority.
The Primer is not a list of tools to follow. It is a way to reflect on your needs in this moment, and a reminder that those needs are allowed to change season to season. When your needs change, the tools should, too.
What follows is built around three things: what these tools can actually do for you, which ones are worth your time, and how to use them without abandoning your own thinking.
Before any tool: three questions.
What thinking remains my own?
- The parts of the work that build your judgment stay yours.
- A tool that does your thinking for you is not saving time; it is depleting your skill.
What am I delegating, and can I easily check it?
- Delegate what you can verify.
- Avoid delegating when you are unable to check for accuracy.
What does it actually cost?
- The subscription is likely the smallest cost.
- With each tool, you are expending attention, data, and energy and water on the grid.
There is a wealth of tools in front of you, and more arriving every week. Choosing well is the skill. It belongs to you.
Below is what people are using, sorted by the work you are trying to do and scored on the three things that decide whether a tool is still with you in a month. Take what fits. Leave the rest. Come back when the season changes.
Reviewed quarterly. Check the company's own page before you subscribe. No affiliate links and no vendor money, ever.
A high WORDS score says nothing about how good the tool is. It tells you the price you are paying in something other than money. You decide whether that price is worth it.
ChatGPT
Most widely used. Trains on your chats unless you turn it off in Data Controls.
Claude
Strong on long writing and thinking a problem through. Does not train on your chats by default.
Gemini
Already sitting inside Gmail, Docs, and Search, so your material is there when you arrive.
Copilot
Built into Word, Outlook, and Teams. The one you are most likely handed at work rather than choosing.
DuckDuckGo AI Chat
Reaches the major models anonymously, with nothing stored. Less capable, and that is the trade you are making on purpose.
NotebookLM
Answers only from documents you upload, so it cannot cite what is not in front of you.
Semantic Scholar
Free search across millions of academic papers. No AI summary standing between you and the paper.
Perplexity
Fast search that shows its sources. Check them. A cited page can itself be AI-written.
A citation is not a source until you have opened it. That check is yours to keep.
Write the draft yourself. Then bring a tool in to question it. The voice stays yours, and so does the skill.
Grammarly
Catches mechanics anywhere you type. Take the corrections. Be slower with the tone rewrites.
Hemingway
Flags bloat and long sentences. Pushes every writer toward the same plain register.
Any assistant above
Best used on a draft you already wrote.
Two findings worth carrying: AI suggestions pull writing toward one style, and the writers furthest from that style lose the most of their own. AI detectors are unreliable, and they wrongly flag people who learned English as a second language far more often than they should.
Say out loud that a notetaker is running. Get an actual yes. Some states require everyone on the call to agree. Keep it out of HR, legal, medical, and anywhere a transcript would change what people say.
Fathom
Unlimited recording and transcription free. Summaries are capped.
Granola
Takes notes from your own audio, no bot in the room. Nobody else can see it running, so saying so is the safeguard.
Otter
Joins visibly and labels speakers. Check who gets the transcript afterward.
Zoom, Meet, and Teams all have their own notetaker now, usually on a paid plan. Nothing leaves the platform you are already on.
Canva
What most people will actually use. Team and Business work is never used for training.
Adobe Firefly
Built on licensed and public domain images, with contributors paid.
Midjourney
Most distinctive results. Trains on your prompts with no opt-out, and your images are public on lower plans.
These models learned from enormous collections of existing images. Some companies paid the people whose work they used. Some did not. You are allowed to ask which.
Refreshed quarterly.
Tools that run on your own computer
Nothing leaves the machine. Real setup, absolute privacy.
Open models anyone can inspect
The transparency is the point.
Small single-purpose tools
Often beat a general assistant at one job, and come and go quickly.
The tool serves your thinking. Never the other way around.
Field Notes is the studio's short email: one observation most weeks on how people and technology actually work together. New Primer recommendations land there before they land here.