Vini’s List
The AI tools we actually like to use, and why we like to use them!
Inspired by conversations with learners in the Harvard Agentic AI Intensives, completely unsponsored opinions from Scholé AI engineers. September 2026
Building and shipping
For going from an idea to something real, then making it better.
Claude Code
Coding agent in your terminal
★ FavoriteThe tool that has changed how our team works the most.
Orca
Agentic development environment
★ FavoriteEver tried to run (way) too many coding agents at once and lost track of what was going on? This solves that.
GitHub
The home base for your code
Agents are much more useful once your code, issues, PRs and actions all live in one place.
Greptile
AI code reviewer
A very good second pair of eyes on every PR. They found that code written by one model and reviewed by a different one comes out better than when the same model does both. Also, greploops are very cool!
PostHog
Product analytics
My default for understanding what people actually do in a product. Analytics, replay and experiments, and it has an MCP as well! Also, the founders are hilarious, and so is their marketing.
Hugging Face
Open models and datasets
Before paying for an API, check if an open model already does the job.
Research
For learning something new very quickly.
Gemini Notebook
AI over your own sources
★ FavoriteDrop in everything about a topic and start asking questions. One of the best self-guided exploration tools out there.
LMArena
Blind model comparisons
This was from my old lab at Berkeley! Really nice for building intuition on how different models stack up, rated by people instead of benchmarks.
Making things
For things other people actually see or hear.
Granola
AI meeting notes
★ FavoriteEvery team meeting we have ends up here. Now has an MCP!
Figma
Design and prototyping
Our designs live here. Lots of cool work being done with Figma Weave.
Rive
Interactive animation
Our interactive agent characters are built with it.
Whisper
Speech to text
Very, very good transcription, and very fast inside products. When specific agents narrate, we are using Whisper.
Wispr Flow
Voice dictation anywhere you type
Everyone seems to be excited about this one. I still have not gotten into it fully, but I see the appeal.
Gamma
AI generated presentations
Lovely interactive presentations, and quite high quality for ten minutes of work. Worth exploring generating HTML slides directly with Claude or Codex too.
Automation
Two good answers, depending on where your work already lives.
n8n
Open source workflow automation
My pick if you want control: run it locally, then use it through MCP from basically any model.
Google Workspace Studio
Agents inside Google Workspace
Very underrated if you already live in Google Workspace. Great for turning inboxes, docs and recurring admin into little agents.
Honorable mentions
Not on a daily basis, but very cool.
Lovable
Websites
Barrier to entry for web development has never been lower! I sometimes use Lovable, but personally prefer going straight to coding agents. Great for folks who don’t want to work in the code.
Perplexity
Search
The new search? I find it much better than the other models for helping me write well-sourced speaker bios or intros.
Zapier
The most integrations
Use this when integrations matter most. It connects to basically everything.
Make
The simplest visual UI
The easiest of these to understand. Where I would tell a beginner to start.
ElevenLabs
AI generated voice
The best generated speech I have used. Good enough that it is in our product: we use these in our scenario features!
Design Arena
Blind comparisons for generated UI
The answer to the "which model has taste" problem: two designs, no labels, pick the better one.
DeepL
Really good translation
Sharper than a general model on business French and German, which matters when a native speaker is going to read it.
OpenRouter
One API in front of every model
Swap models without rewriting anything. This is how we manage stochasticity by having fallback models.
Weights & Biases
Experiments, traces and evaluations
Once an AI system matters, you need to know whether it is actually getting better.
What is not here
Anything we don’t actually use, so the list gets shorter as often as it gets longer. Think something is missing? Write us directly at team@schole.ai.
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