The blog.
Deep dives, comparisons, and roundups on the AI tools worth paying for. Only what we'd actually buy — no SEO sludge, no influencer demos.
Suno pricing: the number that isn't credits
Suno sells credits, but caps something else: downloads. Seven for the lifetime of a free account, 20 a month on Pro, 60 on Premier. What each plan really costs.
Suno review: the free tier is good, and it's shrinking
One prompt on Suno's free plan returned four tracks. Two were playable, two were paywalled previews. What that tells you about paying, tested 3 September 2026.
Udio review: more knobs than Suno, far less rope
Udio, the AI music generator, gives song length and clip timing free, paywalls BPM and its negative prompt, and caps free at 10 credits a day. Tested Sep 2026.
Best Claude skills: the 8 I kept out of 162 installed
The best Claude skills, ranked from 162 sitting on one machine. What each pack does, what it costs you in context tokens, and the four I stopped firing.
Claude skills marketplace: what it is and which to add
A Claude skills marketplace is just a git repo with a manifest. Anthropic's official one lists 291 plugins; 23 say Anthropic wrote them. How to read one.
ChatGPT alternatives: 6 worth switching to, 3 tested
The best ChatGPT alternatives, with the three I use daily scored from real accounts: Claude 4.4 for writing, Gemini 4.3 free, Perplexity 4.4 for citations.
Best AI assistant: the free tiers decide it, not the $20 ones
The best AI assistant depends on whether you pay. Five tested on real accounts: at $20 they are close, on the free tier the gap runs opposite to the ranks.
Claude alternatives: which Claude are you replacing?
Anthropic sells the chat assistant plus five named products called Claude, and page one answers four different questions. Work out which you mean first.
ChatGPT vs Grok: 4 prompts, both free tiers, a clear tie
I ran four prompts through ChatGPT free and Grok free. They tied on all four. The real gaps: Plus $20 vs SuperGrok $30, and five free models against none.
Claude vs Grok: I ran both on a question Google gets wrong
Claude vs Grok, both run on the same two prompts. Both got the hard question right, but Grok opened 3 vendor pages while Claude cited 9 third-party posts.
ChatGPT Plus vs Pro: there are now three prices, not two
ChatGPT Plus costs $20; Pro is $100 or $200. OpenAI publishes the 5x and 20x multipliers but never the base they multiply, and only one tier is a discount.
Gemini alternatives: the two reasons people actually leave
The best Gemini alternatives, sorted by why you are leaving. Privacy points one way, escaping Google's ecosystem points another, and they are different tools.