Picking your first AI tool

There are too many AI tools. Most comparison guides try to cover all of them. This one doesn't — it covers the three tools most people should consider first, and tells you which to pick based on what you're actually trying to do.

The three tools

ChatGPT (OpenAI) — the widest feature set, the largest plugin ecosystem, the most integrations with other software. Most people's default because it was first.

Claude (Anthropic) — better at reasoning through long documents, stronger at analysis and nuanced writing. Tends to be more direct and less prone to over-explaining. The context window is large, which matters when you're feeding it real documents.

Claude Code — a CLI tool that runs Claude directly in your terminal, inside your codebase. Not a general-purpose assistant. It reads your actual files, edits across multiple files at once, runs commands, and understands your project structure.

How to choose

If you don't write code and aren't sure where to start: Use ChatGPT. The interface is mature, there's more third-party support, and it's easier to build the habit of reaching for AI in daily work when you start here.

If your work involves a lot of reading, writing, or analysis: Use Claude. Paste a contract, a research paper, a long email thread — it handles long inputs better and tends to fabricate less in factual responses. The free tier is genuinely usable.

If you write code and want AI deeply integrated into your dev workflow: Use Claude Code. The setup takes 20 minutes. After that it reads your files, understands your project, and edits code in context instead of generating snippets you copy-paste. The leverage is different in kind, not just degree.

The most common mistake

Picking the "best" tool instead of picking a tool and using it consistently for three weeks.

The skill of working with AI is built through repeated use, not through finding the perfect interface. Whichever you choose, you'll hit friction in the first week. That friction is the learning. Don't switch tools to avoid it.

What about everything else?

Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Cursor, Replit — they're all worth knowing about eventually. Most of them are better than nothing and worse than whatever tool you've actually built habits around.

Start with one of the three above. Branch out when you have a specific reason to — not because a new one launched.

One more thing

The gap between these tools changes every few months. Any feature comparison you read in March is different by July. What doesn't change: the skill of prompting clearly, structuring work around AI in your specific context, and building reusable things — artifacts — that capture what you've learned.

That's what the rest of this site is for.