50 AI Tools That Save Me Hours Every Week

From Joe’s workshop

Every AI tool I’ve built (so far) 🤖

Here’s the deal. Over the last couple of years I got a little obsessed. Every time I caught myself doing something repetitive with AI (transcribing a video, cleaning up a prompt, pulling text off my screen) I’d stop and think, “Why am I doing this by hand?”

So I’d build a tool. Then another. Then another. This page is the whole pile, organized so you can actually find what you need.

Most of these run right on your Windows machine with AutoHotkey. A few use the cloud, a few run AI locally so nothing leaves your computer. The ones with a link (you’ll see a little ↗ next to the name) are ones you can grab for yourself. The rest are experiments, some half-baked, some just for me. That’s the fun of it. Time is the one thing you can’t buy more of, and every one of these gives a little of it back.

What AI tools can you build with AutoHotkey?

Way more than you’d think! This page lists 50 I’ve built: transcription (Parakeet, Transcriber), text to speech and voice cloning, writing helpers (ScoreMyCopy, AI Prompt Assistant), smart file renaming and search, OCR, background removal, video subtitles, and tools that help write AutoHotkey itself (AI Error Assist, V1 to V2 Converter).

Do these AI tools run locally?

Some do. They all run on your Windows PC with AutoHotkey, but the AI part varies. A few send work to the cloud, and a few run the AI locally (like Parakeet and Transcriber (Local LLM)), so nothing ever leaves your computer. Look for the ↗ next to a name: those are the ones you can download.

How AI Built a Page Listing All My AI Tools


How AI Built a Page Listing All My AI Tools


 

Have a look around. If one of these solves a problem you deal with every day, that’s a win. 🚀

50
Tools
9
Categories
21
For sale

🎙️ Turning talk into text

I talk a LOT faster than I type. These take audio and video and hand you clean text, from live dictation to “transcribe this whole file and summarize it for me.”

AI Audio Transcribe ↗

Record on the fly or drop in a file, and it turns your speech into text with Whisper. Simple, fast, and it lives in your tray ready to go.

AI Audio Transcribe (WinRT) ↗

Same idea, but it grabs the audio straight from Windows instead of FFmpeg. One less moving part on your machine.

StreamSpeechToText ↗

Real-time dictation that types the words right where your cursor is as you speak. I run it with a foot pedal, which honestly feels like a superpower.

Transcribe and Summarize ↗

Point it at a recording and you get the transcript AND a summary. Right-click a file and go. Great for long meetings you’d rather not sit through twice.

Transcribe with OpenRouter

A little one-shot experiment: pick an audio file, send it through OpenRouter’s audio model, and copy back the text. Bare-bones on purpose.

Transcriber ↗

My workhorse. Transcribes, summarizes, and even whips up a YouTube thumbnail from your media. Right-click and Send-To make it effortless.

Transcriber (Local LLM) ↗

Same tool, but the summarizing happens on a local model. Nothing leaves your machine, and you’re not paying per call.

Parakeet

Drag a video onto it and it spits out subtitles right next to the file, all running locally on your GPU. No cloud, no waiting.

Transcribe Media (frozen build)

The rock-solid “known good” version of my full transcribe app, with speaker labels and filters. When I want something that just works, this is it.

Talk to AI ↗

Ask a question out loud and get an answer back from ChatGPT or Claude. It’s the closest thing to just having the AI in the room with you.

🔊 Making the computer talk back

Sometimes reading is slower than listening. These read text out loud, from plain clean voices to a clone of a real one with actual emotion.

Text to Speech ↗

Highlight text, hit a hotkey, and it reads it aloud with a natural AI voice. You can save the audio too. I use it to catch clunky writing by ear.

AI Clone Speak

Reads your selected text in a cloned voice through ElevenLabs. One hotkey, and there it is.

AI Clone Speak with Inflection ↗

The fun one. Drop tags like [excited] or [whispers] right into your text and the cloned voice actually acts it out. Way more human than flat narration.

✍️ Better writing, faster

Writing eats time. These help me score copy, match a client’s voice, and sharpen prompts before I send them.

ScoreMyCopy

Feed it a headline or product name and it grades it against the character limits and marketing basics: who’s it for, what’s the offer, where’s the reader in their journey. Takes the guesswork out.

Borrowing Writing Style

Keeps a profile of how each client writes so the AI can sound like them, not like a robot. Handy when you juggle a lot of voices.

AI Prompt Assistant ↗

Helps you build and polish a prompt, then fires it off to your AI of choice without leaving what you’re doing.

🗂️ Finding and fixing files

Point AI at a folder and just tell it what you want. Rename a mess of files, filter down to what matters, or search by meaning instead of exact words.

SmartFileRenamer

Describe how you want a folder of files named and the AI proposes the whole batch. No more renaming 200 files by hand. 😊

SmartFileSearch

Tell it what you’re after in plain English and it hands back only the files that match. Like having someone dig through the folder for you.

SearchOnConcept ↗

Drop in your docs, audio, and video, then ask a question. It finds the right file AND the exact page or timestamp where the answer lives. This one still amazes me.

Embeddings Doc Search

Semantic search over the AutoHotkey help docs. Type a concept, get the right help pages, even when you don’t know the exact command name.

🖼️ Working with images and video

Pixels in, results out: read text off the screen, make icons, strip backgrounds, chop up videos, burn in subtitles, and even generate animations.

AI OCR ↗

Drag a box around anything on your screen and it pulls the text out with AI vision, and it’ll translate it too. Text trapped in an image is one of my pet peeves, so this one gets used a lot.

IconCreator ↗

Type what you want, and it generates an image and saves it as a proper multi-size .ico. Every one of my tools needs an icon, so I built the tool that makes them. 😃

RemoveBackground

Drop an image, get it back with the background gone. Runs locally, so no API key and no upload. Fast and free.

Segmenter ↗

Breaks a video into logical chapters for you. Great for turning one long recording into bite-sized pieces.

Translate & Subtitle Video ↗

Generates translated subtitles and burns them right into the video. Reach a whole new audience without touching a video editor.

RemotionWrapper

Describe an animation in plain English (or pick a template) and it builds and renders the video for you. Motion graphics without the headache.

🛠️ Tools for building tools

A lot of what I do is AutoHotkey, so I built AI helpers for AHK itself: fixing errors, converting between versions, and inspecting what’s on screen.

AI Error Assist ↗

Your script throws an error, and instead of googling it, this sends the error and the code to an AI and hands you back a fix. Saves so much frustration.

AI Chat ↗

The same Error Assist idea, licensed and ready to hand out. Send an error or a chunk of code and get help back.

ErrorCapture ↗

Sits quietly in the background and catches your AHK errors the moment they happen, then logs them. Set it and forget it.

V1 to V2 Converter

Turns old AutoHotkey v1 code into v2. Meant to live inside your editor so upgrading old scripts stops being a chore.

V2 to V1 Converter

Goes the other way and flags anything tricky, with an optional AI pass to help with the parts that don’t map cleanly.

UIA Tree Inspector

Point at any element on screen and browse its accessibility tree, with an AI sidebar to help you write the automation. If you’ve ever fought with UIA, you know why this exists.

AutoHotkey Chat Rules

A quick hotstring that pastes my coding-style rules into an AI chat, so whatever it writes actually follows my conventions.

Figma (experiment)

An early design experiment. Not finished, but I keep it around because half of learning is the stuff that didn’t pan out.

⚡ Getting more out of the models

Working with the AI itself: comparing models, sharpening prompts, sorting out API keys, and running things right in the browser.

ModelBenchmark

Lists every OpenRouter model with its cost and context size, then runs a benchmark so you can see which one actually performs. Don’t guess which model to use. Measure. 😊

PromptImprover

Hit a hotkey and it rewrites your rough prompt into a much better one. A tiny bit of polish makes a HUGE difference in what you get back.

PromptStarting

Type your thought, and it opens a fresh Claude chat with a “keep it short and accurate” prefix already in place. Removes the friction of starting.

AI Hotkeys

AI-powered lookup and search shortcuts wrapped into one build. Answers a keystroke away.

ApiKeyIdentifier

Paste in a mystery API key and it tells you which service it belongs to. A small thing, but it’s saved me plenty of head-scratching.

GeminiNano

A web page that generates text with Chrome’s built-in on-device model. No server, no API key, no cost. The future is getting weird in a good way. 🤖

🤖 Assistants and automation

The bigger builds: voice interpreters, a live helper for sales calls, and command-line harnesses that drive other apps for you.

AI Interpreter

Speak, and it transcribes, runs your words through the AI, and speaks the answer back. Three models working together so you can just talk.

HeroCallAssistant

Listens to a live call and quietly surfaces helpful suggestions in real time, with you in the loop to approve them. Like a smart co-pilot on the phone.

AHK CLI (MCP)

A command-line “ahk” that lets AI validate, run, find, kill, and inspect scripts. This is how I let AI actually drive my AutoHotkey work.

CLI-Anything

A shared skin that gives all my little app-driving harnesses (GIMP, Blender, Inkscape, Audacity) the same clean, colorful terminal feel.

Claude Skills Viewer ↗

A clean dark viewer for browsing all the Claude Code skills you’ve got installed. Handy once your collection grows.

📚 Notebooks and data

Front-ends over the stuff I keep coming back to: research notebooks, contacts, and my to-do list.

NotebookLM Desktop

A desktop front-end for Google’s NotebookLM: create notebooks, add sources, and grab the results without living in the browser.

CardSnap

Pulls all my contacts down to a local database and a simple spreadsheet, so I can text and email people in bulk right from the PC.

VoiceToDo

A simple desktop client for my to-do list that syncs with the phone app. Topics on the left, tasks on the right, check them off as you go.

That’s the whole workshop. Some of these took an afternoon, some took weeks, and a few started as “this’ll never work” and turned into things I use every single day.

One thing I’ve learned: you don’t need a giant plan to start automating. Pick the one repetitive task that annoys you most, and take a swing at it. Worst case, you learn something. Best case, you never do it by hand again. 🚀

Want to learn to build stuff like this yourself? Come check out the courses over at the-Automator.com/Discover. They come with a 200% money-back guarantee, so you’ve got nothing to lose. 😊

Happy automating,
Joe Glines

News 2026-04-23 No tokens. No ongoing costs. Just results❗

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy %Name%,

For the past couple of years we’ve been slowly shifting the focus from teaching how to program in AutoHotkey to how to use AI to program AutoHotkey.

Last week I made it official.

Now our focus is to teach how to use AI to automate the mundane (mainly with AutoHotkey)

The truth is, AI is surpassing most people’s programming abilities. 

I think, in 6 months , AI will have surpassed even the best programmers (in all programming languages).

This is the main reason why we’re now focused on helping people use AI more effectively.

We still focus on AutoHotkey because AutoHotkey is phenomenal at automating Windows programs.

Most people teaching AI automation rely on AI to run the automation.
That works… but it also means you’re always paying every time it runs.

When we use AutoHotkey, we might use AI to build the solution but, once it’s done, it runs for free.

No tokens. No ongoing costs. Just results❗

And results that you don’t have to worry they were hallucinated !

Now on with the show…

Learn how to Master VSCode Make the switch to v2 Intro to AutoHotkey Intermediate AutoHotkey Intermediate ObjectsGUIs are Easy w/AutoHotkey Access all our Courses; Quit when you want

masteringPopups


How the-Automator is “better” than other people teaching AI

During a hero call Kenneth mentioned he liked the change in our focus (to teaching how to use AI to use AHK) and how most other channels teach AI to “do the work”.

In this short excerpt we talk a bit how AutoHotkey still has a very important place in Desktop Automation / Robotics Process Automation (RPA) but how most people working in AI don’t know what they don’t know.

How our AI Automation Channel is different than other AI channels Hero Extract
How our AI Automation Channel is different than other AI channels Hero Extract


Giving AI Eyes 👀

As I’ve repeatedly said, AI is getting insanely good at programming in AutoHotkey!

Having said that sometimes it “struggles” with simple things like moving an element in a GUI.

I realized if we could let AI “see” the actual X/Y locations of the Win32 controls, it would not have to guess by looking at screen shots. 

In this short video I walk through a quick approach I took for working with AutoHotkey GUIs.

Stop Claude From Guessing Pixels 🔧 This Scanning Tool Changes Everything
Stop Claude From Guessing Pixels 🔧 This Scanning Tool Changes Everything


Zoom Glance Bar is a surprise hit!

Irfan and I spend most of the day in Zoom together.   Often one of us will be either sharing our screens or muted. 

Unfortunately Zoom doesn’t make it super easy to detect if you’ve muted or are sharing your screens.

So we created a simple “Always on top” notification that let’s me both glance at it (so I know if I’m muted, if my webcam is on, and if I am sharing) but I can also click them to toggle each of those things.

You can check it out in this video.

We haven’t released it yet but, from the reaction to people at the meeting, it is bound to be a hit for Zoom users!

🎯 The Zoom Tool That’s Changing How We Work All Day | Hero Extract
🎯 The Zoom Tool That's Changing How We Work All Day | Hero Extract


Claude Profile Manager

Speaking of big hits, this one is no surprise!

Like every other LLM on the planet, Claude has a given context window length.

Keeping your system settings concise & free of bloat can help Claude focus and extend your conversations.  Like Claude.md, Skills, Agents, and MCP Servers.

Check out our Claude Profile Manager that will let you easily switch between different setups.

Session and profile manager for Claude Hero Extract
Session and profile manager for Claude Hero Extract


Improving People’s Lives: Story #92

Earlier this morning I had a call with a new developer that is creating software for Radiologists.  We had a two hour call discussing the best secrets I know about creating software, tracking licensing, marketing, etc. 

He’ll be able to avoid a lot of the mistakes I’ve made over the past 15 years of running my own business.  


📚 What we’re reading


🤖 AI News that you Need to Know


⚡️Productivity tips: In Chrome:

  • Control+Shift+Tab Reopens last Tab
  • Control+Tab Shifts to next tab
  • Control+T Opens new tab
  • Control + W Closes Current tab

🤣 A spot of Humor: Every dentist on the planet❗

every dentist


What we 🅰utomated this week with AutoHotkey #130

In this week’s video I walk you through a whole pile of AI-assisted tools we built with Claude and AutoHotkey.

Think notification systems, a NotebookLM wrapper, an Excel CLI, registry and WMI explorers, plus some slick Zoom controls.

It’s wild how fast you can crank out genuinely useful stuff when AI does the heavy lifting, and I show off a bunch of them in action.

What we Automated with AI and AutoHotkey #130
What we Automated with AI and AutoHotkey #130


Clients say…

I love your scripts because I don’t have to focus on so many things. I just look at the image and rely on muscle-memory. — Michael N. (Radiologist)


Cartoon superhero mascot in green costume beside the bold text AHK Hero on a yellow background AHK Hero 🦸

Consider joining the 🦸Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.    Currently we have over 551 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to Hero members❗

During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:

  • Help Hero Members with their Questions & Code
  • AHK Script Maker: Fixed tooltips
  • Scintilla Editor AHK v2 Modernization
  • Fast C++ & AHK Windows XP Style Search tool
  • Updates to AHK HotkeyString Lookup
  • Giving eyes to AI
  • Updates to UIA Inspector (now with AI assist)
  • Demonstrating XL.exe (an Excel CLI we made for interacting with Excel)
  • Using Agents in Claude Code
  • Claude Scheduler (maybe not needed because of Claude Routines?)
  • Creating your own Claude Code Commands
  • Using Try/Catch in your code
  • Setting default values in an ini file

They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and 3 hours a week where we help people with their automation issues (the Saturday calls are geared towards people new to Automation with AI)


🗣️ 💭 Quotable quotes

  • The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside — Sigmund Freud
  • Curiosity can empower or impede you — James Cleary
  • Your strength is measured by what you’ve overcome, not what you’ve avoided — Joe Glines

AHK Newsletter⏩SHARE WITH A FRIEND⏩

Do you know someone that would benefit from learning useful automation tips like the gems in today’s issue?  Take a second and forward this newsletter and bask in the glow of their undying gratitude.  Was this email forwarded to you?

Sign up for this Newsletter here.  We never share your email with anyone.  Ever!


the-Automator  Dedicated to Multiplying your Income

Joe, Isaias, Irfan and staff


P.S. You may think AI is not up to the task but I 💯% guarantee you that it is!   We’re getting Amazing AutoHotkey code from Claude Opus 4.7.🔥 

Granted we have 38 very well developed Claude skills specifically for building AutoHotkey code!

Join our Hero club and you can check them out!

 

News 2026-04-16 AI Makes me feel like I’m a kid in a Candy store🍭

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy %Name%,

The last month has been a 💯% game changer for me!

While I’ve been using AI to assist me for nearly 4 years now I hadn’t completely embraced it in my workflow.

But now I can tell you this.

Claude code is insanely good❗

But don’t let the name scare you.  

I’m using Claude Code via the VS Code Extension and I’m almost never looking at the CLI (Command Line Interface).  And you can set up the extension in about 1 minute.

But don’t stop there.   Learn how to create your own Claude commands and then create skills.  

Both are game changers!  

After that MCPs and Agents will blow your mind!

Now on with the show…

Learn how to Master VSCode Make the switch to v2 Intro to AutoHotkey Intermediate AutoHotkey Intermediate ObjectsGUIs are Easy w/AutoHotkey Access all our Courses; Quit when you want

IAutomateEverything

 


Help Your Wife Get You Something YOU Want

This summer will mark our 19th anniversary.

That means it will be 19 years of my wife guessing what she should get me for birthdays, Christmas,  Father’s Day, etc.

I thought this was a very fun opportunity for me to use AI and help her have a better idea of what I would love to get.

Check out how I fed AI what I’d like and then sent to my wife (Buttercup)

Why Every Husband Needs This AI Gift List Strategy 💪
Why Every Husband Needs This AI Gift List Strategy 💪


Help Preserve your Digital Whiteboard

Are you burning through your tokens faster than you need to be?

This video helps walk through some of the best quick lessons in how to get far more out of your subscription than you currently are.

I’ll bet you you get at least 10X more prompt time if you follow half of these.

💸 Why Your AI Chatbot Hits Daily Limits So Fast (Hidden Costs Revealed)
💸 Why Your AI Chatbot Hits Daily Limits So Fast (Hidden Costs Revealed)


Discussing How to Access Claude Code

I’ve been using the Claude model for quite a while now.  Both Opus and Sonnett are insanely good at programming in AutoHotkey.

About 2 months ago I stopped accessing Claude from Chrome and switched to the Claude VS Code extension.  This was a complete game changer!   You can hear more about my decision in this video.

⚡ Why I DITCHED Claude Desktop for This VS Code Setup (Mind-Blown!) | AHK Hero Extract
⚡ Why I DITCHED Claude Desktop for This VS Code Setup (Mind-Blown!) | AHK Hero Extract

If you are intimidated by VS Code don’t worry we got you covered!   Check out our Intro to VS Code course that walks you through setting up and using VS Code with AutoHotkey.   If you purchase by next Tuesday April 21st you can use VSCode50P during checkout you’ll get 50% off

Don’t forget all of our courses come with a Double your Money back guarnatee!


Steal other people’s GUIs in Seconds

Borrowing other people’s GUIs may feel wrong (at first) but, as long as your changing it (and give attribution) most programmers accept it as a compliment.

Using Canva’s new Magic Layers it makes it super easy to borrow any GUI and isolate the elements. 

Check out how easy it is to do in this video.

This AI Tool Turns ANY Screenshot Into Editable Layers 📸 | AHK Hero Extract
This AI Tool Turns ANY Screenshot Into Editable Layers 📸 | AHK Hero Extract


Improving People’s Lives: Story #91

Last week I called a good friend of mine, Bob, on his birthday. 

During the call I mentioned he was using AI to help his work at a casino where he oversees 604 employees.

I of course gave him some simple to use ideas how he can make his usage of AI 10X more productive (mainly by using projects but I did mention how easy it is to create custom tools)

To show him the power of Notebook LM I asked him for a topic he wanted to learn to which he chose Romans 9 from the bible.

I then recorded this video walkthrough how I used it to generate a custom video, infographic, Podcast, Slide deck, etc.

🤖 I Asked AI to Study Romans 9 – The Results Will SHOCK You!
🤖 I Asked AI to Study Romans 9 - The Results Will SHOCK You!


📚 What we’re reading

🤖 AI News that you Need to Know


⚡️Productivity tips:  

In Microsoft Excel

  • Control+Page+ Up/Down – Move between sheets
  • Alt+Page+ Up/Down – Move one screen left/right

🤣 A spot of Humor:

Admit it, you’d love one of these! 🤣🤣🤣

Extreme Keyboard



What we 🅰utomated this week with AutoHotkey #129

In this week’s video I walk you through how, in the Hero group,

we’ve shifted from teaching AutoHotkey coding to teaching how to use AI to code for us (usually but not always in AutoHotkey)

And the results are kind of insane❗

I show off 62+ Claude skills we’ve built, a Ultimate macro recorder that automatically picks the best automation method for you, transcription with Handy and a foot pedal, video processing tools, and a whole lot more.

If you’ve been curious about what happens when you stop fighting AI and start partnering with it, this one’s for you.

129 What we Automated with AI and AutoHotkey
129 What we Automated with AI and AutoHotkey


Clients say…

You guys are awesome — Allen Horn


Cartoon superhero mascot in green costume beside the bold text AHK Hero on a yellow background AHK Hero 🦸

Consider joining the 🦸AHK Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.    Currently we have over 548 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗

You can watch 1 hour a day for a year and not repeat content! That’s a lot of AHK Learning!

During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:

They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and 3 hours a week where we help people with their AHK issues (the Saturday calls are geared towards people new to AutoHotkey.)


🗣️ 💭 Quotable quotes

  • Automation is not about replacing humans. It’s about amplifying humans. — Satya Nadella
  • Right now is a good time to stop the bullshit. Get real. Take a painful review of yourself, and be honest. Face your faults, and begin the fix — John Carlton
  • What people think of you is irrelevant. But how you leave this world matters. Even if it’s all futile in the end, play your part as well as you can. Real courage is fear, in action. Play your hand — John Carlton

AHK Newsletter⏩SHARE WITH A FRIEND⏩

Do you know someone that would benefit from learning useful automation tips like the gems in today’s issue?  Take a second and forward this newsletter and bask in the glow of their undying gratitude.  Was this email forwarded to you?

Sign up for this Newsletter here.  We never share your email with anyone.  Ever!


the-Automator  Dedicated to Multiplying your Income

Joe, Isaias, Irfan and staff


P.S. If you’re learning AI by yourself I can 💯% guarantee you’re missing out😥  

There’s so much to learn it’s insane❗

In our Hero group we share what we’ve done lately and help each other with best practices.  

Just like with AutoHotkey, with AI often it’s just seeing how other people are using it that gives us amazing ideas!