Level Up Your Product Game - With AI Tools I Love ??

AI Tools I LOVE ?? right now and how I use them as a product leader ??:

1) ?? Custom GPTs (via OpenAI )

I’ve been training and fine-tuning CustomGPTs by feeding them specific content, style guides, and templates to get amazing results.

I use them to help me complete deliverables, synthesize (tl;dr) dense documentation, and refine my copy for more impactful communication. They’re easy to use at a basic level, but they really shine when you’re comfortable experimenting with prompt engineering.

2) ?? Midjourney

This is for anyone who loves diving into the details and refining their work. It’s not just an image generator—it’s a playground for perfecting visual prompting and creating visuals with specification.

What I love most about Midjourney is its Discord community. You can browse other users’ prompts, reverse-engineer their results, and learn how they achieved specific effects. As a social learner, I find endless inspiration there. The collaborative vibe and detailed activity log make it a standout tool for creative projects. ???

3) ?? Excalidraw

This has been a lifesaver for wireframing and rapid prototyping as a product leader. I always lean on our awesome UX designers for the true design work, but Excalidraw is my go-to for quickly sketching concepts, ideating real time, and quickly validating ideas with stakeholders.

It’s intuitive and even comes with an AI feature that generates code from your designs. It’s like having a digital whiteboard for brainstorming sessions - it’s quick, great for collaboration, and helps you transform ideas into reality. ????

4) ?? Claude Projects (via Anthropic )

I’ve had so much fun whipping up mocks for in-progress work lately and impressing my designer and developer team members. This worked great for projects with a defined frontend and UI framework, but a need for discussion-worthy mockups to help further define requirements without over-designing (or over-influencing) in Figma .

The quality of the mocks generated are impressive, the code is visible for team members, and the opportunity to build on a knowledge base with a team delivers better quality results than my Custom GPTs, plus you can see each others contributions.

5) ?? Perplexity

My new go-to research and information gathering engine. When I want references, citations, and distilled summaries of complex topics, I go to Perplexity.

Excellent for breaking down complex topics (especially for a non-technical product leader like myself), summarizing key points from research papers, and gathering industry trends for UX, UI, Modernization, and even competitive analysis.

I love that it searches the internet and shares sources, provides details related to specific geographic or industry nuances, and balances details with summaries for busy, distracted people (let’s face it, that’s most of us!).

6) ?? OWOW.ai

If you’ve been following my content, you’ll know I’m a big fan of OWOW’s eye-catching images like this one to zhuzh up my LinkedIn content! Founder Chris Lindland a friend of Codingscape was generous with his time, insight, and advice on AI image generation with Midjourney about 18 months ago when I was just learning the basics.

He had great advice and recently launched an incredible face-swapping app for brilliant, exciting, engaging images. It’s also one of the few image-generating solutions that doesn’t over-sexualize women.

The app is free and available on iOS only but offers good pricing for seasonal, themed, and unique photos. It’s totally worth every penny!

7) ???? Otter.ai

I’ve been using Otter AI to help me transcribe recordings for content since 2019. The tool has evolved really well and includes super helpful collaboration features, summaries, action, items, and tasks, and provides outlines of recordings.

You can integrate it with your calendar to automatically join meetings you approve or upload videos or audio recordings. It’s saved me hundreds of hours of transcriptions, follow-up meetings, and re-watching recordings to “catch the takeaways.”

Only caveat — don’t fall prey to their dark patterns. Ensure you manage your settings to only attend what you want, and don’t pay unless you can benefit from over 300 minutes per month of recordings.

8) ?? Endel

Endel takes inputs like location, environment, scenario, and heart rate to create optimal personalized soundscapes that help you connect with your circadian rhythm — and achieve a state of flow.

I use the Focus, Dynamic Focus, Spatial Orbit, Clarity Trip, Study, and Deeper Focus soundscapes to help me zone in on deep work. I’ve found that my teenagers and puppy all benefit from the science-backed beats and the whole ecosystem feels less stressed, more present, and flowing… together.

Each tool brings something unique to the table:

• Midjourney for creativity and image refinement ??
• CustomGPTs for tailored responses and summaries ??
• Excalidraw for stakeholder collaboration and prototyping ??
• ClaudeProjects for team collaboration ??
• Perplexity for research summaries with sources ??
• OWOW.ai for high-quality, fast face-swapping photos ??
• Otter.ai for transcription, summary, action items, and collaborative reviews ???
• Endel for creating science-backed, stress-less zones of flow ??

**OF COURSE — every solution has its limitations and none are perfect. But when used with intention, these (and other) AI solutions can be super helpful for our everyday work.

I’d love to know what tools you’re using, which you love, and which you’ve moved on from.

Let me know—I’m always looking to try something new!