The question I get most is ChatGPT or Claude. My honest answer is neither is the right starting point.

The right starting point is a browser that has already made half my AI switching unnecessary. I use five tools on any given day. Each one has a specific job. What has shifted is that one of them now handles so much context that the others are filling in what is left.

When people tell me AI does not work for them, nine times out of ten they are using one tool for everything. That is the whole problem. Here is what I actually open, and why.

This is the one that changes everything, and almost nobody I talk to is using it yet.

Comet is Perplexity's AI browser, released globally in October 2025 and free at perplexity.ai/comet. What makes it different from everything else on this list is that it already sees what I am looking at. The page I have open. The document I am reading. The problem I am in the middle of. I do not have to describe any of it, paste in context, or switch tabs to explain myself. That single thing removes more friction than any other tool I have tested.

One of my favorite things to use it for: when I am getting an output I do not like in another AI, whether that is Claude, ChatGPT, or anything else, I can have Comet read the conversation right there on the screen and tell me exactly how to respond, how to improve my prompt, or what to try instead. No prompting templates. No copying and pasting into a separate tab. It just reads what I am looking at and helps me fix it.

Most of the time, you do not need complicated prompting. You need a tool that can see what you are working on and help you communicate better in the moment. Comet does that. And if you do want shortcuts, you can build them directly into Comet.

When I need it to take action beyond the conversation, it can take over the browser and complete tasks for me. Most AI tools answer questions. Comet is in the room with you.

Free tier covers tab management, AI assistant, task organization, email drafting, and it works with your existing Chrome bookmarks and extensions. Perplexity Max unlocks advanced automation and deeper memory. Start with free. It is enough to understand why this one is different.

ChatGPT was the OG, and it is still the most versatile tool in my daily stack.

I use it for brainstorming and for picking up conversations we have been having for years. It can handle images, content, research, advice, and the random in-between stuff that shows up mid-day. It is powerful, and it is usually the fastest way for me to get momentum.

It is also very agreeable, which is occasionally a feature. If I show up looking for reassurance that I am good enough, smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me - ChatGPT understands the assignment.

Most people never take the time to customize it, even on the free tier. When you do, the results compound.

And there is a meaningful difference between free and paid. It is not just about newer data. The paid plan is simply better at reasoning, problem solving, and being resourceful. If you use it regularly, it is worth it.

This is where I go when I need to actually understand something, not just get an answer that sounds like one.

I want the original source. Not a summary three layers removed from where the claim came from. Perplexity gives me real citations and real time data. I use it when I am digging into a specific platform, trying to understand something that changed recently, or following a thread until I actually hit the bottom of it.

Something most people do not know: you can run different models inside Perplexity. Grok, Claude, GPT, Sonar. The model you choose matters depending on what you are researching. That flexibility is underrated.

Google stopped being useful for anything that matters years ago. Perplexity is what replaced it.

Claude is how I get things done without going in circles.

Most AI tools will sprint toward an answer. Claude asks the clarifying question first. It tells you when it is uncertain. It will push back on a bad idea instead of just executing it. After years of other tools telling me what I wanted to hear, that is worth a lot.

The writing does not sound like AI. It sounds like someone who read the thing and formed an opinion. That matters when your output is content someone chose to spend time with.

A trick I use constantly: take a prompt you are going to run in another tool and run it through Claude first to sharpen it. Or use Claude to prompt itself. The Artifacts feature is genuinely underrated too. Most people skip it. Do not skip it.

Claude Code makes coding accessible without a developer background, and you can access it multiple ways, not just inside the Claude app. Cowork uses Claude Code as its engine, which means it is doing real work on your desktop even when you are not in the chat. Dispatch lets you get to your tasks and computer from your phone. The new team platform is next. Claude is not a single tool anymore. It is the infrastructure underneath a lot of what I run.

The paid subscription is worth it. No qualifier on that.

Notion has been my second brain since the beginning, and I mean that literally. Not a recent thing. Not something I set up for this newsletter. It has been the place where everything lives for years.

Right now it holds the operating systems for multiple businesses, everything I train and teach on, content I am creating, clients I am working with, brands I manage. If it matters, it is in Notion. Which means Notion AI is not a separate tool I open. It is inside the system I already live in, with full context on all of it.

The other thing that makes it different from everything else on this list: it connects to virtually anything. Other tools can push into it. It can push into other tools. That makes it extraordinarily useful as memory for AI agents, and I am still working through how far that goes. More on that in a future deep dive.

Custom AI agents inside Notion are where I am experimenting right now. The early results are pretty incredible.

The question is never which AI is best. The question is what you are trying to do and whether the tool you have open is the right one for that job.

Start with one. Use it for one specific thing. Get good at that before you add anything else.

If you want to see how I actually set these up in a real workflow, that's what I cover in The AI Rabbit Hole.

Fall in. Find gold.

- Heidi