18 Comments
User's avatar
Mko G's avatar

Great article.

You could add stackreach.app

I built a free tool to generate social media cards from notes

Next 30, Your Terms's avatar

Thank you Karen , I always learn something new from you 💗

Garth Mackway's avatar

Thanks Karen. I use Grammarly as my proofreader to spot missing commas, etc., although I usually disagree with its grammatical “corrections.”

Philip Hofmacher's avatar

Seriously? I‘d love to know why WriteStack didn‘t make this list.

Karen Cherry's avatar

I don’t use WriteStack, that’s why! Nothing personal :)

Mko G's avatar

What can writestack do that you cannot from substack?

Diane's avatar

Very good and helpful list 👍🏼 thanks for sharing ✨

Francine Boilard 🙋‍♀️'s avatar

Interesting, you're introducing me to some new things. Is there a feature on Substack where we can save our favorite articles for later viewing?

Karen Cherry's avatar

Francine, I don’t think there is a native ‘Save’ feature in Substack, but I have a feeling @Finn Tropy might have a save feature in one of his Substack tools. Finn?

Finn Tropy's avatar

Actually, Substack does offer a save feature, but it's only for posts. Next to the Share button below the title, subtitle, and author, you can see three dots. If you click, the pop-up shows Save, Cross post, Save as PDF. You can find saved articles in your subscriptions inbox. The top menu shows All, Listen, Paid, Saved, and History.

For Notes and Comments, I haven’t found a similar native mechanism, so I built one. It uses mentions, and I can send the details in DM, if you are interested.

Finn Tropy's avatar

Great list, Karen.

I use 6 of the 10 tools you mentioned.

A few others have become part of my daily workflow:

• MacWhisper for turning meetings, interviews, and random voice notes into text.

• Obsidian as my second brain.

• Claude Desktop, which has earned a permanent spot on my toolbar. It's one of the few tools I happily pay $20/month for and use every day.

• Signal for secure messaging.

Then there’s the developer rabbit hole: Cursor, Bruno, DBeaver, DuckDB, and a growing collection of tools that somehow all became "essential."

The funny thing is that every tool promises to save time. Yet somehow I keep finding new ones to learn.

@stacksave

Karen Cherry's avatar

thanks, Finn. I also use Claude Desktop, though not for writing, and agree its worth every cent, but I wanted this post to be an AI-free zone.

Dr. Jacqueline McAdam's avatar

A great list, I pay for Grammarly, did not know it was free...I will have to see what I get... for what I pay for... it is a lifesaver for me... learned some new ones... thank you.

Roberta Hill, Wander After 70's avatar

I use a lot of these too, but I’m gonna check out a few. I didn’t know about.

@stacksave

Susan Harley's avatar

The time zone headache best recommendation from your great list of resources, thank you