AI Tool Stack, updated September 2026

Huxley's AI Tool Stack:
What We Actually Use

These are the tools we build with, train on, and recommend to every client. No affiliate deals. No vendor relationships. Just what works.

Updated 29 September 2026. Prices checked the same day, in US dollars unless marked.

1
Claude by Anthropic
Writing, Strategy, Deep Reasoning

All professional writing, research synthesis, strategy documents, complex prompting, Projects and Skills for persistent context. Claude is the workhorse for anything that requires nuance, tone, or long-form thinking.

Free tier available. Pro at $20/month.

"Our primary tool for almost everything. Set up Projects with your brand voice, SOPs, and company context. Then every conversation starts informed."
2
Claude Code / Replit
Coding, Front-End Design, Website Building

Building web apps, automations, internal tools. Claude Code runs in the terminal and writes, edits, and debugs code with full file access. Replit pairs it with a live hosting environment.

Claude Pro ($20/month) and above include Claude Code. Replit Core is $20/month, or $18/month billed annually.

"We built PaddockMap (a government-equivalent $3.5M system) in a weekend with Claude Code and Replit. The bar for non-technical founders to build real software has dropped dramatically."
3
ChatGPT / Codex by OpenAI
Backend Coding, General Reasoning

Codex for backend/API work. ChatGPT for tasks requiring broad knowledge or when a second opinion on Claude's output is valuable. Good for structured data tasks, JSON handling, and Python scripts.

ChatGPT Plus at $20/month.

"We use Claude for front-end and ChatGPT Codex for backend. They complement each other well. Use both, each where it's strongest."
4
Opus.pro + Opus Agent
Video Editing, Content Repurposing, UGC

Opus.pro automatically clips long-form video into viral short-form content for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts. Opus Agent creates UGC-style ads and landscape videos with AI. Replaces hours of manual video editing.

Free plan available. Starter from $15/month.

"If you create any video content, this pays for itself in the first week. Opus Agent's UGC capability is genuinely impressive for product marketing."
5
NotebookLM by Google
Research, Brainstorming, Knowledge Management

Upload YouTube videos, PDFs, articles, and audio. NotebookLM turns them into a knowledge base you can query, podcast, and get summaries from. Excellent for synthesising long-form research and creating explainer podcasts from documents.

Free (Google account required).

"We combine NotebookLM with Claude: NotebookLM to absorb and summarise, Claude to structure and write. For brainstorming sessions, the auto-generated podcast format is surprisingly useful."
6
Gemini by Google
Casual Image Generation, Multimodal Tasks

Quick image concepts, visual idea generation, Google Workspace integration. Gemini 3.6 Flash is fast and free in the Gemini app. Good for quick visual mood-boarding before committing to a design direction.

Free via Google account.

"Not our primary image tool, but useful for fast iteration."
7
Acronis
Security, Backup, Compliance

Comprehensive backup and security for business devices and servers. Essential baseline for any business using AI with sensitive data. Ensures you have a clean, recoverable state before deploying any new AI workflow.

From ~$50/year per device.

"Security is infrastructure. Before you automate anything, make sure your data is backed up and your endpoints are protected. Acronis is our recommended baseline for SMBs."
8
MacWhisper + Voice Memos
Transcription, Dictation

Use Voice Memos on your phone to capture ideas fast: dictate while walking, driving, or between meetings. MacWhisper transcribes audio to clean text locally (on-device, private). Feed transcripts into Claude for summaries, emails, or SOPs.

MacWhisper has a free version. Pro is €64 one-time.

"Voice memos are underused. Speaking is 3x faster than typing. Combined with MacWhisper and Claude, you can turn a 10-minute voice memo into a polished strategy document in minutes."
9
LM Studio
Local LLMs, Private AI, RAG

Running open-weight models locally (such as Google's Gemma 4 and Alibaba's Qwen3.8) on your own hardware. Zero data leaves your machine. Essential for businesses with compliance requirements or sensitive IP. Also great for building RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) systems against private documents.

Free.

"If your business handles sensitive data and you can't send it to a cloud API, LM Studio lets you run capable models locally. The gap with cloud models is closing fast."
10
Keeper Security
Password Management, Access Control

Business password management and secrets management. As you integrate more AI tools, the number of API keys and logins multiplies. Keeper keeps them organised, shared securely with team members, and auditable.

Business Starter $2/user/month, Business $4/user/month, billed annually.

"Basic hygiene. Keeper puts every API key, login, and AI tool account in one place, shared securely and auditable. Non-negotiable for any team with more than one person."
Kimi by Moonshot AI

Chinese-developed, strong at long-context tasks and slides. Good for research. Use only for non-sensitive workflows, because data sovereignty questions apply.

Replit (standalone)

Web-based coding environment. Combined with Claude Code, it's how we build and host client tools rapidly. Free tier available.

Miro

Whiteboarding and visual collaboration. Miro is the established standard.

Pomelli by Google Labs

Helps small businesses create on-brand social media campaigns. It launched as a public beta in October 2025, with Australia among the first countries.

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