Most Useful AI Tools Don't Look Like AI Tools

January 6, 2026

There's some hype around "AI agents" lately. I have found that the tools that end up being useful are usually quite simple than the ones being marketed.

What actually works is solving a single clear problem. If a tool consistently saves time or reduces repetitive work, it has value!

One of the most effective tools I built was for a real estate agency. I built an AI tool that generates property descriptions from structured listing data. It wasn't flashy, but it integrated cleanly into their workflow and ended up saving hours each week while improving consistency across listings.

The real skill isn't chaining models or building autonomous systems. It's choosing the right problem and building the smallest thing that reliably solves it.