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03 — The tools
I test the free tier of everything and keep what earns its place.
The most useful column here is the third one. Almost nobody tells you which tools can reach your repository on their own, and which leave you pasting code by hand.
| Tool | What I use it for | Reaches my repo? | When it can't |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Where I start when the job is a conversation. Plain chat, no token ceiling to worry about, good for thinking a job through. | Yes | — |
| Claude (Anthropic) | My coding pick. Strongest of the set for code, holds more context, writes content and scripts well too. | Yes | — |
| Gemini | My learning pick. Explains things well, plugs into YouTube, fits the Google ecosystem. | Yes | — |
| Grok | Fastest expert opinion, and it reads X for me so I never scroll post by post. Grok 4.7 Fast for quick answers, Grok 4.7 in Grok Build to build. | Yes | — |
| Kimi K3 | Codes well and holds a huge context window. | Yes | — |
| DeepSeek | A genuinely strong free model for reasoning and code. | No | Copy-paste into Claude or Grok |
| MiniMax | The all-rounder: front end and back end both, holds up on real builds. | No | Copy-paste into Claude or Grok |
| Perplexity (Pro) | Deep research when I actually need it, paired with Apify for social media scraping. | No | Hand the findings to Claude |
| Metricool | My social media manager. Scheduling and reporting for X, driven by a prompt. | Yes | — |
Free tiers change, so this table says what I use today. Checked November 2026. Where a tool cannot reach the repository itself, the work goes through Claude or Grok, which can.