What AI Tools Do I Use — And How Do I Actually Use Them?
- Kayode Omojola
- May 3
- 4 min read
By Dr Kayode Omojola, PhD, CEng | Founder, Prismvolt
I get asked this question a lot. So here's my honest, unfiltered answer.
But before I list any tools, let me say this: knowing which tools exist is not the same as being AI literate. Real AI literacy means understanding what a tool is designed to do, where it excels, where it falls short, and critically when not to use it at all. That judgment is what separates someone who dabbles with AI from someone who genuinely benefits from it.
Part of true AI literacy is also understanding what AI actually is and what it isn't. AI is not magic, it is not infallible, and it is not a replacement for human judgment. But it is a genuinely transformative technology, one that, used well, can extend your thinking, accelerate your work, and open up capabilities that simply weren't accessible before. That understanding is what allows you to approach it with both confidence and appropriate scepticism.
In my previous blog, I explored why AI Tools Fatigue is holding people back — too many tools, too little clarity. This piece is the practical follow-on: the tools I actually use, and more importantly, how I use them. If you haven't read that one yet, find it at our previous blog.
My Current Toolkit: Two Categories
I organise my AI tools into two distinct categories and I'd encourage you to think the same way.
Category 1: Everyday Tools - Strategic Thinking Partners
ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini form the core of my daily AI practice. Between them, these three tools account for roughly 80% of my daily AI activity, which tells you something important about how much you actually need to get significant value from AI.
I'm a paid subscriber to all three and that matters. The enhanced reasoning, extended context, and additional capabilities available on paid tiers are significant. If you're using free versions and wondering why your results feel limited, that's often part of the answer.
But I don't use them the way most people do; opening them, typing a question, and closing them again. I treat them as ongoing strategic partners. They hold significant context about me, my goals, and my thinking style. I actively manage that memory and context so that every interaction builds on the last. The result is that they don't just answer my questions, they challenge my assumptions, stress-test my thinking, and offer perspectives I haven't considered — exactly what a great strategic thinking partner should do.
Each has a distinct strength. ChatGPT is versatile and highly responsive. Claude excels at deep analysis, long documents, and complex reasoning. Gemini's multimodal capability, processing text, images, audio, and more, makes it uniquely powerful for certain tasks.
I also use more advanced capabilities within these platforms, including agentic tools for automation and building (Claude Cowork, Code, and OpenAI's Codex) — but those are for a separate conversation. You don't need to start there.
Category 2: Specialist Tools
These depend entirely on the task:
Perplexity: my go-to for research, fact-finding, and real-time information
NotebookLM: exceptional for making sense of documents and supporting content creation
Manus: an emerging tool I'm actively experimenting with for a range of solutions including building websites and applications. It's early-stage but genuinely interesting
The key word in that list is depends. I don't reach for a specialist tool out of habit. I reach for it because it's the right instrument for a specific job.
How I Use AI Matters More Than Which Tools I Use
This is the part most people overlook.
The quality of what you get from AI is directly proportional to the quality of how you engage with it. Clear prompting, well-managed context, and knowing how to brief your tools properly will consistently outperform someone with twice as many tools but half the intentionality.
Think of it like this; a skilled craftsperson with three good tools will always outwork someone with thirty tools they don't know how to use.
The Question I Always Ask First
Before I reach for any AI tool, I ask myself: what problem am I actually trying to solve?
This isn't a caveat or a disclaimer. It's a genuine strategic skill. Knowing when to deploy AI, when to combine it with your own thinking, and when to trust your own judgment entirely is one of the most valuable capabilities you can develop right now. The people who will thrive in an AI-augmented world aren't those who use AI the most, they're those who use it the most intelligently.
The AI landscape is expanding fast. New tools will keep arriving. Stay curious, stay discerning but always start with the problem, not the tool.
Stay Connected
If you've found this story interesting or it has sparked your curiosity about AI, I'd love to stay connected.
Follow Prismvolt across our social media channels for regular AI insights, practical tips, tool recommendations and much more — new content every week.
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Your lens to AI confidence.
Dr Kayode Omojola, PhD, CEng Founder, Prismvolt
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