The Palette
The shortlist of AI tools worth your time: 104 of them, one clear line each, no bloat. Filter by what it's for or whether it runs on your own machine. Our hands-on verdicts live in The Proof.
Okane Land originals
Built in-house · free to use · no signup
Editors & assistants 10
▸ Cursor
AI-first VS Code fork; the default most people land on.
The original AI pair programmer; lives in VS Code, JetBrains, and GitHub.
▸ Windsurf
VS Code fork built around Cascade, its agentic mode; Cursor's main rival.
Codebase-aware assistant; leans on Sourcegraph's code search for context.
Open-source Copilot alternative you point at any model, local or hosted.
Google's agent-first IDE with Gemini and browser automation; free in preview.
Open VS Code extension, 500+ models, no API markup; superset of Cline/Roo.
AWS's spec-driven IDE; you write specs first, agent builds from them.
Tabby local
Self-hosted open-source completion you run on your own box.
Fast Rust editor with AI built in; not a VS Code reskin.
Agents & terminal 19
▸ Aider
Pair-programs from your terminal, git-aware, model-agnostic.
Usage-priced coding agent from the Sourcegraph team; raw token prices, no markup.
Anthropic's terminal agent; reads your whole repo and edits it.
▸ Cline
VS Code agent with file and terminal access; asks before acting.
Autonomous 'AI engineer'; demos big, judge the receipts.
Droids across desktop, CLI, and SDK; no free tier, usage tiers from $20.
Google's terminal agent on Gemini; generous free tier.
Block's open agent for desktop and CLI; rides the model subscription you already pay for.
Nous Research's self-hosted agent; remembers across sessions and writes its own skills as it works.
Google's async coding agent; hand it a repo and a task, get a PR back.
The general agent that does whole jobs: research, slides, sites. Credits meter every step.
Open Interpreter local
Runs code locally from plain language across Python, JS, shell.
OpenAI's CLI agent; runs edits in a cloud sandbox.
▸ OpenClaw
The personal assistant you run yourself; answers on WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage and 26 more channels.
Open-source terminal agent, provider-agnostic, with LSP awareness.
Open-source autonomous engineer; the self-hosted Devin alternative.
Cline fork; holds up on multi-file edits in big repos.
Princeton's research agent that resolves real GitHub issues.
AI-assisted terminal itself, not just an agent in one.
App & UI builders 10
▸ Bolt.new
Build and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser from a prompt.
▸ Lovable
Prompt-to-app web builder; one of the defaults vibe coders reach for.
▸ v0.dev
Vercel's tool for generating React UI from text and image prompts.
The designer-grade site builder, now with AI credits; $10 gets a real custom-domain site.
Open-source Bolt fork that runs any LLM, local or cloud.
Open-source framework for embedding AI copilots into your React app.
Visual Flutter builder with AI help; the pick for mobile.
Cloud IDE with an agent that builds whole apps from a description.
Open-source: turn a screenshot or mockup into HTML/React/Vue.
Draw a UI on a canvas, get working HTML/CSS back.
Review, test & secure 9
AI bot that reviews your PRs with line-level, context-aware comments.
▸ Playwright local
Microsoft's end-to-end browser testing framework; the default for new web tests.
▸ Semgrep
Open-source static analysis with rules for bugs and security; runs in CI.
▸ Snyk
Developer-first security: scans code, dependencies, containers, and IaC.
GitHub's semantic code analysis for finding vulnerabilities; free on public repos.
Catches leaked secrets and API keys before they hit your repo.
PR review bot that reasons over your whole codebase, not just the diff.
AI test generation plus PR review; its PR-Agent is open-source.
AI reviewer that suggests refactors and cleanups across 30+ languages.
Local models 7
▸ LM Studio local
Desktop app to find, run, and serve local models with a chat UI.
▸ Ollama local
Run open models locally with one command; the default starting point.
▸ Qwen2.5-Coder local
Alibaba's open coding model; the go-to weights for self-hosting.
Strong open coding model; runs local or cheap via API.
Jan local
Open-source, offline-first desktop app for local models; ChatGPT-style UI.
llamafile local
Mozilla project packing a model into one runnable file, no install.
LocalAI local
Self-hosted OpenAI-compatible API for local models; drop-in for existing code.
Frameworks & APIs 10
The default framework for chaining LLMs, agents, and retrieval.
Data framework for wiring LLMs to your own documents; RAG-first.
Open-source LLM app platform: visual builder over the LangChain-shaped plumbing.
Apache-2.0 visual agent builder; self-host free, cloud if you want it managed.
TypeScript toolkit for streaming AI UIs; what most web devs reach for.
Open-source RAG and agent pipelines; a leaner LangChain alternative.
One proxy, 100+ providers behind a single OpenAI-style API.
Hosted gateway to many models through one API key and bill.
Test, eval, and red-team your prompts before they ship.
Microsoft's SDK for LLMs in C#, Python, or Java apps.
Workflow & ops 6
▸ Context7
MCP server that feeds current library docs to your AI editor.
Breaks a spec into tracked tasks for Cursor and Claude Code.
Shows the cloud cost of Terraform changes right in the PR.
Docs platform that generates and keeps docs in sync from code.
Search engine with live web access; handy for digging up coding answers.
Mac launcher with AI commands wired into your everyday workflow.
Marketing & content 16
▸ Jasper
AI content platform built for marketing teams; agents keep the copy on brand.
Go-to-market copy and prospecting in reusable AI workflows, not one-off prompts.
Optimizes your draft against the pages already ranking; the content-SEO default.
▸ OpusClip
Turns one long video into captioned vertical clips for Shorts, Reels, and TikTok.
AI video editing and digital twins on a credit meter; strongest on talking-head content.
Edit video and podcasts by editing the transcript; clips filler in one pass.
Product URL in, UGC ad variants out; the ad-cloning agent is Claude with a toolbelt.
Generates talking-avatar videos from a script, with voice cloning and translation.
The corporate avatar-video incumbent; 10 free minutes, then minutes are the meter.
UGC ads fronted by cloned real actors; the one media buyers actually name.
The go-to AI voice: text-to-speech, cloning, and dubbing across 70+ languages.
Canva's AI bundle: text-to-image, auto-layout, and copy inside the design tool.
Still the image-quality bar; GPU-hours are the real unit, and commercial use has a revenue clause.
Prompt-to-deck (and doc, and site); the fastest route from outline to something presentable.
Generates ad images, headlines, and video, then scores what is likely to convert.
Newsletter platform built for growth and money; AI writing and images included.
Sales, automation & ops 14
A 230M-contact database plus sequencing; prospect, enrich, and email in one place.
Cold email at volume: unlimited sending accounts and warmup, priced by sends and leads.
The other cold-email machine; cheaper entry, unlimited mailboxes on every tier.
HubSpot's AI layer; Breeze agents prospect and answer across the CRM.
Build no-code AI agents for outreach, scheduling, and CRM updates across 5,000+ apps.
▸ Zapier
Connects 9,000+ apps and now builds AI agents to run multi-step tasks for you.
Visual drag-and-drop automation; wire 3,000+ apps with AI agents in the flow.
Drag-and-drop AI workflows; the automation pick when every step is a model call.
AI-workforce agents for ops teams; self-serve tiers are gone, enterprise-only now.
▸ n8n
Open-source automation you can self-host; native AI agent nodes, no per-task bill.
AI support agent that resolves chat, email, and voice, and escalates the hard ones.
Records, transcribes, and summarizes your Zoom and Meet calls; genuinely free tier.
Notion's built-in assistant; writes, summarizes meetings, and runs agent tasks.
The developer tools were seeded from the MIT-licensed awesome-ai-coding-tools list (270+ entries), then cut and rewritten by hand; the marketing and business picks were researched and added separately. ▸ marks a must-know; the seal means we've used it and written it up. Tools move fast; last refreshed 2026-07-07. Missing something good? Nominate it in the community →