After writing 500+ newsletters and roughly 1.5 million words about AI over the past two and a half years, I've tested more tools than I can count. Most don't stick. Some become indispensable.
This week, instead of our usual Deep Dive analysis, I'm sharing something more personal: the AI toolkit I actually use, the books that shaped my thinking this year, and an event I'm helping bring to life. Consider it a gift from my desk to yours—curated recommendations from someone who lives in this space daily.
No affiliate links. No sponsored placements. Just the stuff that works.
🎙️ AI Confidential Podcast - Are LLMs Dead?
🔮 AI Lesson - Stop Sending Confidential Files to ChatGPT
🎯 The AI Marketing Advantage - AI Marketing Enters Its Agent Era
💡 AI CIO - Fresh Minds Outsmart the Experts
📚 AIOS - This is an evolving project. I started with a 14-day free AI email course to get smart on AI. But the next evolution will be a ChatGPT Super-user Course and a course on How to Build AI Agents.
Your 2026 AI Toolkit
A gift from my desk to yours—the apps, books, and events that earned their place
These aren't the newest or flashiest tools. They're the ones I reach for daily—the apps that survived the hype cycle and became part of how I work.
For Thinking and Writing
Claude — My primary working partner for analysis, writing, and research. When I need to think through a complex topic or draft something nuanced, Claude is where I start. The extended thinking capability changed how I approach complex problems. I'll pose a question, let it reason through the complexity, and often end up with angles I hadn't considered.
ChatGPT — The Swiss Army knife. Custom GPTs make this indispensable for repeatable workflows. I use GPTs for newsletter editing, research synthesis, and meeting prep, saving me hours every week. The ecosystem of plugins and integrations enables it to connect to almost everything.
Gemini — If you live in Google Workspace, Gemini's integration is hard to beat. Document summarization, email drafting, and spreadsheet analysis happen right where the work already lives. The 1-million-token context window is genuinely useful for long documents.
For Creating
Midjourney — Still the best for images that don't look AI-generated. The latest version produces work I'm genuinely proud to publish. Every feature image in this newsletter starts here.
ElevenLabs — Voice cloning that actually sounds human. I use this for audio versions of content and haven't looked back. The quality gap between ElevenLabs and alternatives is significant.
Gamma — I've stopped dreading deck creation entirely. Describe what you need, and Gamma produces presentations that look professionally designed. It's not perfect, but it's 80% of the way there in minutes instead of hours.
For Productivity
Granola — Meeting notes without the awkward "is it okay if I record this?" conversation. Granola runs locally, captures the conversation, and produces structured notes with action items. I review and edit, but the heavy lifting is done.
Notion AI — For anyone already in Notion, the AI features have matured into something genuinely useful. Q&A across your workspace, writing assistance, and database automation. Not revolutionary, but consistently helpful.
Perplexity — When I need to research something quickly and want citations I can verify, Perplexity is faster than traditional search. The Pro Search feature is worth it for complex queries.
The Unsexy Essential
A good text expander — I keep a swipe file of prompts that work. Text expanders (I use Raycast on Mac) let me deploy them instantly. Type a shortcut, get a proven prompt. This tiny tool probably saves me more time than anything else on this list.
Three Books Worth Your Time
I read dozens of AI books this year. These three actually changed how I think.
Stephen Witt
Winner, FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2025
The definitive Nvidia story—and by extension, the story of how AI became possible. Witt traces Jensen Huang's journey from a Denny's founding meeting to running the most valuable company on Earth. But this isn't hagiography. Witt examines the strategic bets, the near-death moments, and the culture that made Nvidia the picks-and-shovels winner of the AI gold rush.
Why it matters for business leaders: Understanding Nvidia's playbook helps you grasp the infrastructure layer on which everything else depends. Witt makes the technical accessible without oversimplifying it.
Karen Hao
New York Times Bestseller | Smithsonian Top 10 Science Book of 2025
The OpenAI story told by someone who was there from the beginning. Hao, one of the few journalists ever granted inside access, documents how a nonprofit safety organization became a capped-profit company racing to build AGI. Reporting on human and environmental costs—from data workers in Kenya to water consumption in Chile—provides crucial context that the hype cycle ignores.
Why it matters for business leaders: If you're building on OpenAI's APIs or competing against their products, understanding the company's internal tensions and external pressures helps you make better strategic decisions.
John Willis with Derek Lewis
John Willis—a foundational figure in the DevOps movement and co-author of The DevOps Handbook—traces the intellectual history of AI from Ada Lovelace to the present. This isn't a technical book. It's about the ideas, the people, and the philosophical debates that shaped how we think about machine intelligence.
Why it matters for business leaders: Context beats novelty. Understanding where these ideas came from helps you evaluate where they're going—and separate genuine breakthroughs from repackaged concepts.
Join us at All Things AI 2026, happening in Durham, North Carolina, on March 23–24, 2026!
I'm co-organizing this conference with Todd Lewis, who built All Things Open into one of the largest tech conferences in the Southeast. So take this recommendation with appropriate context.
That said, here's why I think it's worth your time:
The 2025 event drew 1,600 attendees. The 2026 event targets 4,000 attendees across two venues—hands-on workshops on Day 1 and keynotes and sessions on Day 2.
It's practitioner-focused. Four tracks: AI Builders (developers), AI Engineers (ML professionals), AI Users (business practitioners), and AI Executives (strategic leaders). We're deliberately avoiding the vendor-pitch-disguised-as-content that plagues most AI conferences.
Durham is a genuine tech hub: Research Triangle Park, Duke University, and a growing AI startup ecosystem. If you're flying in, you'll find more to do than attend sessions.
Early registration is open. Pricing increases in phases, so the earlier you are, the cheaper it is.
Don’t miss your chance to connect, learn, and lead in the world of AI.
Prompt of the Week: The Annual AI Toolkit Audit
The end of the year is the right time to evaluate what's working and what's collecting dust.
The Problem
Most of us accumulate AI tools faster than we evaluate them. Subscriptions renew automatically. Free trials convert. By December, you're paying for tools you forgot you signed up for—and missing tools that could actually help.
The Prompt
You are a pragmatic technology advisor helping me audit my AI toolkit for the coming year.
## My Current AI Tools
[LIST YOUR CURRENT TOOLS, SUBSCRIPTIONS, AND APPROXIMATE MONTHLY/ANNUAL COSTS]
## My Primary Use Cases
[DESCRIBE HOW YOU ACTUALLY USE AI IN YOUR WORK - BE SPECIFIC]
## Instructions
1. Identify redundancies—tools with overlapping capabilities where I'm paying twice for similar functionality.
2. Flag underutilized tools—subscriptions where the cost exceeds the value I'm extracting based on my use cases.
3. Identify gaps—use cases I described that aren't well-served by my current toolkit.
4. Recommend consolidation—where I could reduce tools without losing capability.
5. Suggest one addition—a single tool I should evaluate based on my use cases (not the newest or trendiest, but the most likely to deliver value).
## Output Format
Provide:
- A keep/cut/evaluate verdict for each current tool with reasoning
- Total potential savings from cuts
- One specific tool recommendation with why it fits my use cases
- A 30-day evaluation plan for any "evaluate" verdicts
## Constraints
- Be direct. Don't hedge.
- Assume I value results over novelty.
- Factor in switching costs—don't recommend changes unless the benefit clearly exceeds the friction.
Why This Works
The structured audit forces honest evaluation. The "switching costs" constraint prevents the common mistake of chasing new tools when existing ones work fine. The 30-day evaluation plan turns vague "maybe I should try this" into concrete action.
Looking Ahead: 2026 Coverage
When we return in January, here's what's on deck:
AI Agents in Production — The gap between demos and deployment. What's actually working, what's failing, and why.
The Governance Gap — Most enterprises have AI tools but not AI policies. We'll provide frameworks that work.
Build vs. Buy 2026 — The calculus is shifting. When does building your own models make sense? When is it an expensive vanity?
Cost Reality Checks — AI infrastructure costs are surprising CFOs. We'll dig into what things actually cost at scale.
Practical Implementation Guides — Less theory, more "here's how to do this Monday morning."
Thank You
This newsletter exists because of you. Not in a generic "thanks for subscribing" way—in a specific, concrete way.
You're the reader who caught the pricing error in the October toolbox before I hit send. You're the one who pushed back on my governance framework because it wouldn't work in a regulated industry. You're the nonprofit leader who asked the question I hadn't considered about AI ethics policies.
Every reply, every correction, every "have you thought about..." makes this better. I read all of them. I can't always respond, but I always read.
Two and a half years ago, I started writing about AI for business leaders because I couldn't find the newsletter I wanted to read. One that took the technology seriously without the hype. One that assumed readers were intelligent adults who could handle nuance. One that cared about what actually works.
I hope this has been that newsletter for you.
See you in 2026.
—Mark
I appreciate your support.
Your AI Sherpa,
Mark R. Hinkle
Publisher, The AIE Network
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