The AI Daily Driver Stack

Most people collect AI tools and use none of them. This is the opposite - the minimal stack that earns its place in a daily workflow.

Thinking & writing

The reasoning layer. This is where you draft, think out loud, and work through hard problems before anything gets built.

Claude

Long-context reasoning, drafting, code.
The daily driver.

Reach for it first for anything that needs depth - long documents, real reasoning, code that has to work.

ChatGPT

Fast lookups, voice mode, image gen when you need it.

The quick-answer and utility belt. Voice on the move, images on demand.

Building

Where intent becomes software. Plain English in, shipped product out.

Claude Code

Turn plain-English into shipped software in the terminal.

Describe the change, it makes it. The fastest path from idea to running code.

Cursor

AI-native editor for when you're hands-on in the code.

For when you want your hands on the keys - AI in the editor, not the terminal.

Capture & recall

The memory layer. Catch what matters so you don't carry it in your head.

Granola

AI notes that actually summarize your meetings.

Walk out of every call with the summary already written.

Raycast AI

Quick prompts without leaving the keyboard.

Fire a prompt from anywhere. No tab-switch, no context loss.

The rule

Pick one per row. Two tools that do the same job is a tax, not a stack.

Master the few, ignore the rest. Follow opusjake.ai for the full toolkit breakdowns.