What a great age we live in, where you can just describe what you want and it appears! Okay, it's not quite "Tea, Earl Grey, hot", but Pickaxe is pretty close in terms of AI tools.

I used it yesterday to create a little tool just for my own use -- a bot to help me get past creative blocks by asking me a series of questions to focus me on the "Why?" of the project, define my approach, brainstorm design ideas, then break the task down into approachable actions.

My first try, it came out nearly perfect, with one small glitch: It asked all the questions at once. So I went back into the editor and, in plain English, added just one extra line of instructions. The tool changed its behaviour, making it act exactly as I wanted. Moments later, I was underway with my work, and the tool had given me some really useful design suggestions I wouldn't have come up with on my own. (Except I did, kinda. It's like talking to yourself, except the other you isn't stuck in your own thinking.)

Until now, browsing AppSumo has been like going through a kitchen appliance aisle, looking for precisely the right single-purpose gadget to fit my needs -- and often not finding it, because what I want is too specific or not relevant to enough other people for it to get made.

But with Pickaxe, it's like I've suddenly inherited an overseas factory that will design a single instance of anything I ask for and ship it to me.

Then comes the thought "Well, if this is useful to me, maybe somebody else would want it" -- which opens up a whole other world of possibilities. And Pickaxe already has that capacity baked in, with design tools and the ability to build a "studio" (storefront) for your creation.

So whether you just want to make tools for yourself or you're looking for a way to build custom-tailored AI solutions to other people, I would heartily recommend Pickaxe.

Maybe you could do these things with ChatGPT, but I find Pickaxe's interface much more inviting, plus it gives you your own environment for sharing tools -- which surely must elevate its perceived value (versus being a tool stuck into ChatGPT's sidebar).