Happy Thursday!
Welcome back to HOW TO // AI. I built you nine free AI tools this week. One person, one weekend, sat at my kitchen table.
No sign-up on any of them. No email to give up first. Paste something in, get something out, close the tab.
Let me tell you the honest reason they exist. Two reasons, actually. The first is that they're the ones I found myself wanting and couldn't find anywhere free. The second is that I think these could really help you out!
Here's what's in today's issue:
🧰 The nine tools, one line each, with links
🔒️ What they deliberately don't do (the part worth forwarding)
🎯 Try this in the next five minutes
💬 One ask: tell me which tool to build next
Let's get into it!
🧰 The nine, in one glance
All free. All no-sign-up. Web only, works on your phone. Open, paste, out.
Three brand new this week:
Summarizer - Paste up to about 30,000 characters and get the version you actually need: the two-line one for your boss, the bullet list for your team, the "just the decisions" one. It's the tool I use most.
Quiz generator - Paste your notes, get a quiz from them. Not from thin air. Not from the internet. From the material you already know you'd like to remember better.
Email reply writer - Paste the email you got, tell it the vibe, get a reply that sounds like you and not like a robot.
The certification trio, for anyone chasing an AWS or Azure or Google AI cert this quarter, all linked from the free tools page:
Study plan generator: pick a cert, pick your exam date, get a week-by-week plan.
Cost calculator: what the exam actually costs, what it renews at, what a retake runs.
Renewal tracker: put your certs in, get a heads-up before they expire.
One thing to say plainly on the study plan: there's a button that emails a copy to yourself. If you press it, you get added to this newsletter. That's the trade. It's a good one, and I want you to know about it up front.
The two everyday ones, also on the free tools page:
Prompt improver: paste the sad little prompt you were about to send. Get a better one back.
Which AI tool should you use: describe the job, get a straight answer about whether it's a Claude problem, a ChatGPT problem, a Gemini problem, or a "don't use an AI for this" problem.
One honest limit while I'm here. The summarizer cannot open a YouTube link. It reads text. If you want the gist of a video, grab the transcript first and paste that in. I'll ship the video version when I'm sure I can do it without lying to you about what it actually understood.
🔒️ What they deliberately don't do
This is the part I'd like you to forward. If you only read one bit of today's issue, read this one.
Every one of these nine tools was built to earn the "paste something private in" moment. So here is what they are not doing while you use them.
There is no account. No sign-up hidden two clicks in. No "you'll need to create one to see the result." A text box, a button, and an answer.
Nothing is stored. Your paste doesn't sit in a database with your name on it. Your prompt doesn't get filed away for training. When you close the tab, it's gone.
PDFs are read in your browser, not uploaded. Drop a PDF into the summarizer and the text is extracted on your own machine before anything is sent. The file itself never leaves your laptop. That was deliberate. It's the reason I'd paste a real client document into a browser tool made by a stranger, so I built it the way I'd want it built for me.
The email reply writer does not invent dates or prices. If the email you paste doesn't mention Tuesday, the reply won't say Tuesday. If there's no dollar figure in what you paste, no dollar figure comes back out. This is a hard rule, and I check it more than I check anything else.
The certification numbers come from the vendor pages. AWS says the exam is $150, we say $150. If the vendor page doesn't list the retake price, we say we don't know and leave the gap visible, instead of guessing it into existence.
None of that is a marketing promise. It's the actual shape of the code. I built them this way because it's how I want the tools I use to behave.
🎯 Try this in the next five minutes
Grab the transcript of a meeting from this week. Any meeting. Zoom, Teams, Meet: they all give you one now, tucked away somewhere in the recording view.
Paste the whole thing into the summarizer. Pick the option that says "My manager, who wants the decision."
Read what comes back. Then read the transcript again. Notice what got kept and what got dropped. That's the shape of a good meeting summary, and it's the shape most of us fail to hit when we try to write one from scratch.
That's my most-used tool of the nine. That's why I built it first.
💬 One ask this week
No download this time. The nine tools are the download.
What I'd love from you instead: hit reply and tell me the tenth. What's the tool you keep wishing existed? What's the thing you paste into ChatGPT every week that a proper little single-purpose page would do faster, or safer, or without you having to sign in again?
Or, if you found something broken, tell me that too. I read every reply. I fix the broken things the same week.
🧰 Two other things I made, in case you're new here
A lot of you joined in the last few weeks, so here's the short tour of the shelf:
📕 Amplified is my book on getting real work out of AI without becoming a prompt engineer. Everything in this newsletter grew out of it. Get the book →
🤖 HOW TO // AI - CERT is practice exams and an AI tutor for 15 AI and cloud certifications: AWS, Azure, Google, NVIDIA, Anthropic and more. 5,197 original questions, timed mocks, plain-English explanations. On the web and on your iPhone. Free to start. Take a free practice exam → · Get the iPhone app →
🎁 Share HOW TO // AI, get free rewards
Forward this to one friend who's been noodling with ChatGPT for six months and still hasn't found a tool that stuck. One referral is all it takes for the first reward:
🎁 1 referral → the Complete Kit Vault: every kit I've ever made, in one organized hub, with every future kit added automatically.
📕 10 referrals → my book, Amplified, in PDF and EPUB. The whole thing. Free.
Your personal link and progress tracker are right here:
🔒️ Forward this to somebody who deserves a break: nine free AI tools. No account. Nothing stored. PDFs read in your browser rather than uploaded. Built this weekend by one guy who wanted the tools himself. howtoai.com/free-ai-tools
📬 In case you missed our last few issues
What does AI actually know about you?
A ten-minute audit for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Every menu, every toggle, plus the one rule that matters more than all of them combined.
The prompt I run before every meeting
Thirty seconds before you walk in, and the hour goes differently. Plus the free Meeting Kit.
The 3 prompts I actually reuse
The editor, the extractor, and the explainer. Long on purpose. Plus the free Paste-In Prompt Pack.
🤔 Got questions?
Have a question you want answered? What's the AI tool you keep wishing existed? Email [email protected] and you just might be featured in an upcoming issue!
This newsletter is your starter kit for mastering AI with confidence. We keep things simple, show real examples, and focus on quick wins you can repeat.
Stay curious, stick with it, and watch your skills grow week by week!
Until next time :)
-David
P.S. If your day job is enterprise IT - VMware, cloud, storage, infrastructure - I write a second newsletter that decodes that world in ten minutes a week: Subscribe to Enterprise Techie →
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