Productivity

The AI tools space has a freemium problem. Half the tools advertised as “free” are really “free for 3 days, then $29/month.” The other half give you a watered-down version that’s barely useful. This list is different. Every tool here has a genuinely useful free tier — one that doesn’t require a credit card and doesn’t cut you off after an hour. I’ve included what each one is actually good for so you can pick the right tool for the job. ...

You’ve got a 40-page PDF. Could be a contract, a research paper, a report your boss sent, or a manual for something you bought three years ago. You need the key points. You don’t have time to read the whole thing. Good news: ChatGPT can help. Bad news: it’s not as simple as “upload and summarize.” Let me walk you through what actually works, free-first. Why PDF Summarization Is Trickier Than It Sounds ChatGPT reads text. PDFs are sometimes text, sometimes images of text, sometimes a nightmare combination of both. If your PDF was scanned rather than digitally created, ChatGPT can’t read it directly — it just sees an image. So the method you use depends on what kind of PDF you have. ...

Most people use ChatGPT for emails exactly wrong. They type “write me an email” and get something generic that sounds like it was written by a committee. Then they give up and write it themselves. The problem isn’t ChatGPT — it’s the prompt. Give it better instructions and you get back something you’d actually send. Here are 15 prompts built for real situations, including the ones most people avoid because they’re awkward or high-stakes. ...