ChatGPT
Planning, drafting, checking, and polishing. Used for site copy, ebook material, podcast assets, prompts, and social posts. Useful when the work needs a second brain, not another committee.
Affiliate disclosure
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you sign up or purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Not every tool listed here has an affiliate relationship. This page reflects the stack I use or test in my own ecosystem, with recommendations based on practical value, reliability, workflow fit, and quality of results.
AI & Intelligence Layer
Tools used for planning, drafting, review, scripting, and quality control without pretending one app should do every job.
Claude
Long-form reasoning, review, and quality control. Used for deeper editorial thinking, long-context review, code reasoning, transcript checks, and quality assurance. It is especially useful when the work needs nuance, structure, and fewer robot fingerprints.
OpenRouter
Different models for different jobs. Used for scripts, editorial passes, rewrites, analysis, and fallbacks when one model is not the right tool. Very sensible, if slightly less dramatic than it sounds.
Content, Newsletter & Organic Growth
Tools used to publish, schedule, collect sign-ups, and keep book, podcast, and newsletter promotion moving without leaning on paid ads.
Blotato
Social post production. Used to turn approved AI insights, podcast themes, and evergreen book ideas into publish-ready social posts while keeping the voice away from generic automation sludge.
OneUp
Organic social scheduling and evergreen posting. Used to schedule and manage organic social content, including evergreen daily posts and platform-specific updates. It supports the shift towards leaner scheduling and analysis without paying for tools that sit around looking expensive.
Mailchimp
Newsletter delivery and list management. Used for the AI Edge newsletter, sign-up lists, and campaign delivery. It keeps email tidy without duct-taping the whole thing together.
Jotform
Forms and structured data capture. Used for contact forms, newsletter touchpoints, and structured submissions. It keeps useful audience or business information organised instead of letting it vanish into inbox fog.
BotSailor
Chatbot automation for site and social channels. Used for website, Facebook, and Instagram chatbot workflows, including book recommendations, keyword responses, and conversational routing that supports visitors without needing 24/7 human babysitting.
Outreach, Research & Quality Signals
Discovery, enrichment, verification, and domain-quality tools used to focus outreach on better prospects.
RapidAPI
API marketplace and data source layer. Used to test and connect external data sources, especially for search, enrichment, and lookup workflows. It helps feed automation with structured data rather than relying on manual copy-and-paste archaeology.
Urlscan
URL inspection and risk screening. Used in outreach and backlink research to inspect URLs, redirects, page behaviour, and potential risks before engaging with a site. It keeps the pipeline cleaner and helps avoid questionable domains.
Hunter.io
Email discovery and verification support. Used to find and check contact details for outreach workflows so partnership, backlink, and mention opportunities are aimed at real inboxes rather than digital tumbleweed.
Apollo.io
Organisation and contact intelligence. Used as a research layer for understanding companies, contacts, and site owners behind potential outreach targets. It strengthens prioritisation before any email is drafted.
Prospeo.io
Outreach discovery and enrichment. Used as part of the contact enrichment stack to identify relevant prospects and support backlink or partnership research. It helps widen coverage when one provider alone does not have enough signal.
OpenPageRank
Domain quality signal for outreach. Used to sanity-check domain strength so outreach time is spent on sites with meaningful authority. It works as a scoring signal alongside relevance, safety checks, and human judgement.
ZeroBounce
Email validation and list hygiene. Used to validate and clean outreach email lists before campaigns run. It protects sender reputation, reduces wasted sends, and helps keep backlink outreach from turning into a bounce festival.
Infrastructure, Media & Governance
The hosting, deployment, asset, compliance, and reliability stack behind the public site and automation services.
Koyeb
Application hosting for automation services. Used to host the AI Management Suite and its API services, including publishing hooks, RSS workflows, content automation, audit services, and long-running backend jobs that need reliable uptime.
Cloudflare
DNS, hosting, security, Workers, and R2 storage. Used as a core infrastructure layer for DNS, Cloudflare Pages, Workers, caching, security, and R2-hosted assets such as podcast files, reports, feeds, and static resources.
ImageKit
Image optimisation and delivery. Used to keep site visuals fast, clean, and consistent. It helps optimise images for web performance so pages feel sharp without dragging around a wheelbarrow of pixels.
GitHub
Version control and deployment source of truth. Used to manage code, track changes, review patches, and support deployment workflows. It keeps the ecosystem auditable, recoverable, and less likely to become a mystery cupboard.
Hookdeck
Webhook routing, retries, and observability. Used to manage external triggers and webhook reliability across automation services. It provides the retry and inspection layer needed when APIs decide to have a little lie down.
AWS
Podcast audio generation and cloud services. Used in the podcast pipeline, including text-to-speech audio creation and supporting cloud services. It helps turn scripts into listenable episodes with a more reliable production backbone.
CookieYes
Cookie consent and compliance support. Used to manage cookie banners and consent controls for the website, helping keep analytics, tracking, and user privacy in a cleaner governance lane.
One.com
Domain and hosting support. Used as part of the wider domain and hosting toolkit, giving the ecosystem another practical foundation layer for web presence, email/domain management, and operational resilience.