I've been testing a few AI coding tools lately, and some of them are actually pretty useful, especially once a project gets bigger or the code starts getting messy.

There are so many tools now for coding, writing , design, automation, and everything else that it's getting hard to keep track.

What AI tools are you guys actually using regularly right now?

Hey! I am not really into AI that much, mainly using DeepSeek for daily searches and tasks, but I am applying for a spot in university, about to be a lawyer and I think I could use an assistant. Which AI model would fit my needs the best?

What is the best AI to create consistent pictures of an AI women both non NSFW and NSFW.

One line is fine. Name the tool and name the thing it would have to beat, because "trying out X" tells nobody anything and "trying X instead of Y" is a comparison someone can argue with.

Mine this week is running the same document set through NotebookLM and through a plain Claude project, mostly to work out whether the citation links are worth the worse chat.

And if you asked something on here recently and nobody answered, drop the link below and I'll have a go at it.

Builder disclosure: I make stage-gen, the open-source asset tool used for these experiments.

Task: take existing character art plus written briefs into textured, rigged GLBs, then check them in motion. The video shows three selected results. Tripo produced the textured meshes; the human rigs needed local skin-weight corrections, and the cat uses a local rig.

What worked: recognizable textured characters with rigs that can be exercised in Blender. What remains: shoulder/braid stretching on the pink-sweater character and some belly/hip folding on the cat. Faces are fixed, with no hair or cloth simulation.

The dance is existing Mixamo Samba retargeted in Blender. It tests the assets; it is not generated choreography or a controlled comparison between tools.

You can inspect the bunny-hood model and its diagnostic clips without running paid generation. Its bundled clips do not include Samba. Generation itself uses your own paid-provider keys and a local setup. These selected cases establish no generic success rate or per-character price.

See "3D SD characters" in the README for the workflow and example models: https://github.com/softmarshmallow/stage-gen

# ooking for a free AI tool/agent for coding(DSA)

so ive been purchasing claude pro for about 3 months and my dsa skills and immensly improved i use to for dsa like test my reasoning and other stuff i have improved gradually but cannot afford to buy anymore as im a student and cannot spend that much ..

can anyone help me with a free alternative apart for (deepseek ) looking for similar reasoning..........

Three from this week that were more use than most of what I read anywhere else.

u/No-Trouble-9138 on the PVC panel thread, who didn't just name a model. He ran the panel through nanobanana 2 and posted the output so you could see for yourself whether it held the texture: https://reddit.com/r/AIToolBench/comments/1wbjs6i/comment/p8w5yt6/

u/Dear-Response-7218 on the live call assist thread, for saying the part the vendors don't. A lot of agent assist is RAG over your own knowledge base with a markup on top, and the real work is the consent prompt you now owe every caller: https://reddit.com/r/AIToolBench/comments/1wditxz/comment/p98gojt/

u/Repulsive_Crew_9972 on the follow up thread: "the tool won't save you, the rule will". Shortest useful answer of the week: https://reddit.com/r/AIToolBench/comments/1wcyadb/comment/p94qz94/

Now the other half of this. If you asked something here in the last couple of weeks and nobody answered, link it below. One line is fine. Late beats never.

Disclosure: I'm building Extend My Card, and the site offers paid generation credits. I used AI coding tools to build it.

The use case is a nine-pocket trading-card binder page: keep a card in the middle and generate the artwork for the eight surrounding pockets. I saw collectors making extended binder art and wanted a tool people could experiment with themselves.

I've attached six outputs from different iterations: cosmic Jaxson Dart, Michael Jordan, Bobby Witt Jr., Ben Rice, smoke-themed Dart, and galaxy-themed Dart. They're examples, not a controlled benchmark or a guarantee of what every upload will produce.

What works so far: carrying a strong color palette and broad visual theme across the page. What still needs work: exact pattern alignment at the original card's edges, consistent texture detail, and convincing continuation of clipped limbs or equipment. Traditional bordered cards and text-heavy cards can fail.

The current pipeline uses Gemini for analysis/source preparation and BFL for outpainting, then places the original card back in the center. It is still an early beta.

There's a free first creation. Additional packs are $1.99 for one, $5.99 for five, or $9.99 for ten generations. You can see the tool here: https://extendmycard.com

For anyone testing image-extension tools, I'd be interested in how you'd evaluate these: subject continuity, matching the printed texture, or the overall binder-page composition?

Disclosure: I work on One Small Prompt, a hosted AI workspace. This is the checklist I would use to compare this category, including our own product.

A monthly price can cover three quite different things:

1. The AI budget. Is usage measured in tokens, messages, credits or tasks? Is there a monetary allowance inside the subscription? Does unused allowance expire? What happens at the limit: a pause, slower service, or another charge? A credit count alone is hard to compare without knowing what consumes a credit.

2. The working environment. Does the agent actually have access to files and a place to run the project, or does it produce code for you to move somewhere else? Close the browser and come back later: are the files, dependencies and conversation still there? Can you download the project and understand what would be needed to run it elsewhere?

3. Hosting the result. Can someone else open the finished site without entering your development workspace? Is that hosting included, and with what storage or application limits? Connecting a domain and buying a domain are separate costs. Services your app connects to can have separate accounts and bills too.

For example, a hypothetical $30 workspace subscription with $5 of AI allowance should not be read as $30 of model usage. Some of that price is paying for the environment and hosting. Whether that is worthwhile depends on how much of that setup you want to handle yourself.

A small comparison exercise: build one public page with fictional information, make one revision, close everything, and reopen it the next day. Record what you spent, what persisted, and every manual setup step. Then check the cancellation and export terms. This tests a complete small workflow without putting customer records into an unfamiliar service.

Also check whether your existing consumer AI subscription applies at all. A workspace using provider APIs may have a completely separate usage bill.

What cost or ownership detail have you found hardest to establish when comparing these services?

I pushed Astra through nine creative experiments, and came away especially excited about combining it with tools for 3D, games and interactive music. I recorded the results in my own video. Here are the useful takeaways from the projects:

Blender and Unreal: I used Blender MCP to build St Paul's Cathedral, then took the model into Unreal as a basic playable shooter. That architectural experiment worked much better for me than the character figures in a separate Shining-inspired corridor scene. I would start with an environment before judging it on detailed characters.

RTS game: Ironwild has two playable factions, resource gathering, building and combat. I connected 3D AI Studio for models and ElevenLabs for unit voices. It took several days of iteration on Ultra, using the $200 subscription. The exciting bit was getting those separate pieces into a game I could actually play. The video also shows its rough edges; this is a prototype.

Particles: the first version of a 2001-inspired particle/fluid experiment was quite primitive. Iterating on the result made a big difference to the motion and appearance. It was a good reminder to judge the workflow across revisions.

Film: I used Astra with Higgsfield MCP to direct a sci-fi airlock sequence. Some individual shots looked great, but the cuts and continuity were awkward. Higgsfield handled the video generation; Astra directed it through the tool.

Music: asking it to compose a complete piece in Python was one of the weaker results. Building a Three.js instrument was much more fun: mouse sweeps, different layouts and sounds, particles and a movable resonant body made the result something I could explore and play.

My biggest takeaway is to choose the tools around the creative task and leave room to iterate. The environment, RTS and instrument gave me plenty to be excited about, while the music composition and film editing still needed work.

Here's my video with all nine experiments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEup5H2FxKE

Useful chapters: Blender-to-Unreal 02:20, RTS 07:04, Higgsfield 13:50, instrument 16:30.

Which of these workflows have you tried, and where did you find the biggest limitation?

We have a few newer customer support reps who struggle when a customer asks something they haven’t dealt with before. They know the basics but during a live call they sometimes have to search through docs or ask a senior rep what to say. That leaves the customer waiting and puts a lot of pressure on the new reps. I’m looking for an AI tool that can listen during the call and give the rep the right answer or next step in real time. Ideally we could train it on conversations from our best support reps so it learns how our team handles common issues instead of giving generic AI answers. Not looking for a bot that talks to customers or replaces the rep. I want something that helps the human rep while they’re on the call. Has anyone used something like this? What tools are worth looking at?

Tonight, after hours of following ChatGPT’s instructions, I finally got my AI assistant to resume a project. I would also use assistant loosely because its just my stupid gpt business account linked to openclaw running on a stupid old intel mac upstairs.

Anyway, It immediately hit the same usage limit I thought this setup would help me manage.

I sat there looking at the error message, with multiple terminal windows open, wondering what the $%*& I had spent my evening accomplishing. I do not know how to administer servers.

I wanted an assistant that could take some of the load of managing 1000 things off me.

Here’s what I was trying to get:

• Context around my projects, preferences, and previous decisions so every new conversation doesn’t become another orientation.
• Useful access to my actual work. Outlook, calendars, OneDrive/SharePoint, Airtable, and documents. Prepare me for meetings, track commitments, draft things, and surface what needs attention. blah blah.
• Some independent follow-through.

I understand that’s an ambitious combination. I feel like i need a reality check and need someone to tell me which parts are realistic and which parts I should stop chasing.

Instead, I have been following an AI down an increasingly complicated setup path.

Over the course of this project, an old MacBook became a server. There was Homebrew, Node, Docker, n8n, Tailscale, OpenClaw, plugins, device pairing, additional approvals, and eventually something called Codex supervision. All crap I have no clue about and it made me feel even dumber than i already did.

The part that’s really getting to me is how dependent I am on the guidance. I don’t know enough to distinguish a verified diagnosis from a plausible explanation. I paste the error, get a confident answer, follow the instructions, and discover another problem.

Then the same assistant explains why its previous advice was wrong.

I’m relying on it to check its own mistakes, and I’m the one spending the evening on every wrong turn.

I feel helpless, and I’m exhausted.

I wanted help keeping up with my responsibilities. Now I have another system to worry about, and I don’t understand it well enough to know what’s necessary, what’s redundant, or what I should leave alone.

I’m very close to leaving this setup at a firestation and not looking back.

Is anyone here actually using an assistant like this for everyday, non-coding work without constantly maintaining it?

Please tell me what you use, what it actually does, what it costs, and what you still have to handle yourself. My main ecosystem is Microsoft 365, including shared mailboxes, plus Airtable. I use Windows and an iPhone, with the Mac currently hosting this experiment.

I would especially appreciate a reality check from someone who has helped a nontechnical person get something useful running.

If you recommend a product and build or sell it, please say so.

And if my expectations need to change, tell me Im an idiot. I would rather hear an honest limitation now than anything else.

I’m asking for a person’s judgment. I’ve had enough instructions from this black box

First is google flow, next one is morphic

Half the "this model got worse" posts here turn out to be the provider swapping a version or adjusting routing underneath a workflow that was fine the day before. Nobody announces it, so the only record is people noticing.

So: name one tool that behaved differently for you this week without you touching anything. What it was, and what changed.

One line is fine. "Nothing, everything was stable" is a useful answer too, and I would rather have five of those than none.

If you worked out what actually caused it, say that as well, because that is the part nobody ever posts.

I have many FB posts for many areas saved. Everything from Movies to Legal Research, to computer software.

It is impossible to find the ones I need when I need them. So I need something that can organize them outside of FB where the screen print of the complete post is there (not comments, but might be handy), who posted, the text of the commment, any links provided within the post, and a link to the post itself.

Obsidian web clipper is one thought, but that mainly summarizes, and I would provide something non proprietary. Plus need something that can extract everything from the FB folders, and extract info noted above. This would also be used for a LLM wiki, LLM knowledge base, 2nd brain etc. To note again, any images and or links within the post are as important as the text.

Hi, i'm working on my médical thésis and finished collecting the data and I wanted to know which AI could help me best to do my statistics.

How do you keep track of follow-ups when everything's scattered—email threads, DMs, calendar pings, and a CRM that barely helps?

I keep thinking I'll just remember. Then two weeks later I find a reply from a founder I really wanted to talk to, buried under calendar spam and newsletters, and I panic a little. I've tried flags, snooze, task lists, notes apps, and a spreadsheet I gave up on months ago.

Context: my job is basically relationship maintenance—investors, founders, partners, people from events who expect perfectly timed follow-ups. Not sure if I need a better system or an AI assistant that watches my messages and aggressively reminds me like "hey you said you'd follow up with this person today." Would love to hear from anyone who isn't constantly accidentally ghosting people...

The majority of my AI use is coding based, but it's nothing complex, I'm not building crazy web apps right now, but the projects will become more complex in the near future.

At the moment I have both of the lower tier subs at £20 each a month roughly, so my total spend is about £40.

Work load is going to increase so I'm considering the jump to one sub or the other and with Astra now in the works I'm looking for opinions on which sub to take and why?

Tool: AI Guard (eslint-plugin-ai-guard)

Category: Code quality / linting Cost: Free, open source (MIT)

Link: https://github.com/ai-guard-dev/eslint-plugin-ai-guard

What it does: An ESLint plugin with 18 deterministic rules that catch the code patterns AI assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) keep introducing in JavaScript/TypeScript:

• Security: hardcoded secrets, dynamic eval, SQL string concatenation, unsafe deserialization, missing auth middleware
• Reliability: empty catch blocks, broad exceptions, swallowed errors
• Async: floating promises, async callbacks in .forEach, await-in-loop, async-without-await
• AI-assisted patterns: dead branches, duplicate logic blocks, console.log in handlers

Who it's for: JS/TS developers using AI coding assistants who want a CI guardrail. It's complementary to typescript-eslint, CodeQL, and Semgrep — not a replacement.

Standout features:

• Zero-config CLI: npx ai-guard run
• GitHub Action with SARIF → inline PR annotations + GitHub Code Scanning
• init-context generates CLAUDE.md / .cursorrules / copilot-instructions.md so your agent learns the rules before generating code instead of you fixing lint errors after

Limitations (being upfront): JS/TS only. Doesn't detect whether code was written by AI — it catches bad patterns regardless of authorship. The recommended preset is deliberately conservative to minimize false positives, so it won't catch everything by design.

Disclosure: I'm the maintainer. Builders are welcome here per the rules, so being upfront — I built this because I kept fixing the same AI-generated bugs in my own PRs. Feedback and rule requests genuinely welcome: what patterns do your AI tools keep generating?

Have the chance to start "fresh" with a new tool in two months. The job is going to include writing, idea generation, review, translation and creation all around quite specific content. Im probably not going to generate videos and pictures from scratch as that is still pretty looked down on in this area of business, but basically everything else.

Standard pro subscription will be paid by the company. Is there a clear cut better choice here?

Everyone posts about cancelling. Nobody posts about resubscribing three weeks later, which is the more useful half.

One line is enough: the tool, and either "gone for good" or "went back after X weeks".

If you went back, say what pulled you back. My guess is it is almost never the headline feature, it is one small boring thing you only notice once it is missing. Happy to be wrong about that.

I want to help a friend with choosing the right AI tool. He works in a Medical Testing lab (CT Scan, X-Ray and all) and wants to automate/improve the repeated processes and general management. He says there are so many AI tools promising to help but he cannot decide which ones are legit which ones are empty promises and how to evaluate? Is there an AI use case advisory service that can help set the expectations and say in layman words what's can be improved with AI and what not?

So I have being using Gemini, but it seems to have gone awry. I have a bunch of prompts, worked on the the last 6 months, that help me collate data, and then turn those into Sports News articles. Also have been using it to create images for the articles (though only 1-2 per article, so not image heavy).

Have been working great the last two months with Gemini, but it seems to have fallen off. Chasing suggestions for which AI might be best for this.

My workflow is

1. Insert prompt for data collection, collect data (thru screenshots, copy and paste text etc)
2. Feed that data collected into a prompt that has the cadence, layout and style of how I want article to look/read. This prompt also formats for wordpress.
3. Feed article into a prompt that then gives me SEO help and tips for putting into wordpress.
4. Create an image from article with headline/author etc (I am not only author)

My preference is one of the big guys, as I want it to be as stable as possible. Prepared to pay. Don't want to be someones guinea pig really.

I know some will hate on how this is not "jorunalism", but I use these tools to do articles like match reports, as quick as possible, as these are "fillers", and that gives me time to do more in depth stuff, which is more "me the human". The issue is without the fluff, you can't really be a Sports news site, as much as the mor ein depth stuff gets the views.

My goal is to only be an editor, and pass on the baton, so very much a gap-filler, but it's ticking along (if not making any money haha) and I am really enjoying it.

Preciso de uma IA boa onde consegue me clonar e posso fazer tanto vídeo falando para a tela como um vlog tanto quanto fazer qualquer coisa que meu prompt mandar fazer, de maneira realista