The AmplifierTools
The AI tool directory, by category
Categories, not brands. Each category below says what kind of work it eats, what it leaves behind, and which names are worth looking at right now. The date tells you how stale the names are. The categories will outlast every one of them.
Planned for release phase 2. The page is complete as a draft; interactive parts run in the browser and do not yet save to an account.
In brief
To choose a tool, start with what goes in and what comes out; that halves the field. Then ask how much context it must hold, whether the work is iterative or one-shot, how accurate it has to be, and how often you will do it. If none of the categories fits, use the "use AI to find AI" prompt at the end of this page. Names last reviewed 12 September 2026; the next review is due in March 2027.
Conversational text tools text → text, back and forth
Thinking out loud, drafting, summarising, asking questions you do not quite know how to ask yet, reviewing your own plans. The category most people mean when they say "AI" without thinking.
Drafting and rewriting; summarising long material; first-pass research; flow review (Step 2 Phase B); turning your plain-language brief into an optimised prompt (Step 5).
Anything that needs context only in your head; final judgement; facts that have to be right unless the tool has web access and you check the sources.
Names to look at, September 2026: ChatGPT (OpenAI) · Claude (Anthropic) · Gemini (Google) reviewed 12 Sep 2026
For iterative work with long documents, choose on context window size. For anything client-facing and factual, use one with web access and read the sources it cites.
Coding assistants code in your editor, or an instruction → a function
Tools that live inside the editor, watch what you are writing and suggest the next piece, or take an instruction and produce a function, a test, a refactor. "For a junior developer in 2026 these aren't optional anymore."
Boilerplate, test scaffolding, refactors with a clear spec, translating a known behaviour into a new framework, explaining unfamiliar code.
Design decisions; anything you could not defend line by line; the Tab you press without reading, which is where the book's protagonist finds his own dependency.
Names to look at, September 2026: Cursor · GitHub Copilot · Claude Code reviewed 12 Sep 2026
Whatever you use, read what it wrote. "If you can't explain it, you don't ship it" is the Avoider's line in the book, and it is also just engineering.
Image generation text → image
Describe an image, get an image. Moodboards, storyboards, campaign visuals, concept art, the stock photography nobody pays for any more.
Moodboards and storyboards (single-shot, taste-judged by you); variations to choose between; placeholders.
The art itself, when the art is the point — Kavya's line. Anything where the maker's hand is what is being bought.
Names to look at, September 2026: Midjourney · Adobe Firefly · Stable Diffusion reviewed 12 Sep 2026
One-shot tasks suit specialised tools; a chat interface is not needed. Generate ten, choose one — the choosing is yours.
Video generation and editing text or image → video
Not as good yet as image tools, improving fast enough that the book's mentor "would bet on them".
Rough cuts, explainer drafts, animatics, resizing and captioning at scale.
A finished piece whose tone has to land — the fintech video in the book was fixed by rewriting the end state, not by the tool.
Names to look at, September 2026: Runway · Sora (OpenAI) · Adobe Premiere's generative features reviewed 12 Sep 2026
Check the accuracy requirement: anything with real people, real claims or regulated content needs human sign-off at the frame level.
Voice, transcription and meeting notes audio → text
Record a meeting and get a clean, speaker-tagged transcript in minutes. Turn a long document into audio for the commute.
Transcribing client calls and interviews (verifiable output, low cost of error); meeting summaries you will read and correct; dictation.
Anything where nuance of tone is the content; decisions made on a summary nobody checked against the recording.
Names to look at, September 2026: Whisper (OpenAI) · Otter · Fireflies reviewed 12 Sep 2026
High frequency: if you transcribe weekly, invest in setup and a template for what you want back from every transcript.
Research and document tools your documents → answers, summaries, audio
Tools that work over a set of documents you give them rather than the open web — a folder of reports, a course, a brief — and answer from those.
Getting oriented in a large body of material; producing a study guide or an audio overview; finding where something is said.
Substituting the overview for having read the thing, when reading it is the job — the student trap.
Names to look at, September 2026: NotebookLM (Google) · ChatGPT / Claude projects with uploaded files reviewed 12 Sep 2026
Context requirement is the deciding characteristic here: choose the tool that can hold everything you need it to see.
Agents an instruction → actions taken on your behalf
The new category. Tools that do not just answer but go off and do: book the flight, send the email, run the analysis, work through a task list. "We're early in that, but it's where everything is heading."
Recurring, well-specified, verifiable sequences where the cost of error is low and you review the result.
Anything irreversible, expensive or reputational without a human check — the Decision Filter's fourth question applies twice over.
Names to look at, September 2026: Agent modes inside the major conversational tools · Task-specific agents in your existing software reviewed 12 Sep 2026
Names in this category change fastest of all. Judge by the category questions, and start with something you would be comfortable undoing.
Vision and analytics image → text; data → pattern
Reading an image, a chart, a photo of a whiteboard, a screenshot; and finding patterns in data you give it.
Extracting text and structure from images; first-pass data exploration; charts you will check.
Conclusions drawn from data you did not understand yourself — you cannot evaluate what you cannot read.
Names to look at, September 2026: Vision features in the major conversational tools · Spreadsheet and BI tools' built-in AI reviewed 12 Sep 2026
Verifiable output is the strength here; use it, and verify.
Use AI to find AI
When your task fits none of the above, or you want a second opinion on the names.
Editorial policy: names are reviewed every six months against the framework's five characteristics; a name is listed because it is a strong current example of its category, not because of any commercial relationship. The book's own list (Chapter 4, April 2026) named ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Adobe Firefly, Sora, Runway, Whisper, Otter, Fireflies and NotebookLM.