Reference

Tools & Apps

Chat apps, local runners, coding agents, and creative tools — the working software of the AI era.

The programs people actually use with AI — chat apps, local model runners, coding agents, and creative tools. Listings link to official sites only; pricing notes reflect each vendor's published tiers at the time of writing. New to all of this? Start with the beginner track. Machine-readable: tools.json.

Chat apps

Consumer-facing assistants for general questions, writing, coding, and research.

Freemium

Claude

General-purpose AI assistant from Anthropic for conversation, writing, coding, and document analysis.

Web · iOS · Android · macOS · Windows
Site
Freemium

ChatGPT

OpenAI's conversational assistant with text, image, voice, and web-browsing features.

Web · iOS · Android · macOS · Windows
Site
Freemium

Gemini

Google's AI assistant, integrated with Google Search and Workspace apps.

Web · iOS · Android
Site
Freemium

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft's AI assistant for chat, web search, and image generation, integrated across Windows and Microsoft 365.

Web · Windows · iOS · Android
Site
Freemium

Perplexity

AI answer engine that responds to questions with cited web sources.

Web · iOS · Android · macOS · Windows
Site
Freemium

Grok

Conversational AI from xAI with real-time access to web and X content.

Web · iOS · Android
Site
Free

DeepSeek

Chat assistant from DeepSeek AI that runs the company's open-weight models.

Web · iOS · Android
Site

Local runners

Applications and libraries for running language models on your own hardware.

Free

LM Studio

Desktop application for discovering, downloading, and running local LLMs with a chat UI and an OpenAI-compatible local server.

macOS · Windows · Linux
Site Docs
Open sourceFree

Ollama

Tool for downloading and running open-weight models locally, with a command line and a local API.

macOS · Windows · Linux
Site
Open sourceFree

llama.cpp

C/C++ library and command-line tools for running LLM inference locally across a wide range of hardware.

macOS · Windows · Linux · CLI
Site
Open sourceFree

Jan

Open-source desktop app to run LLMs offline, with local chat history and an OpenAI-compatible server.

macOS · Windows · Linux
Site
Open sourceFree

GPT4All

Desktop app from Nomic AI for running open-source LLMs privately on your own device, including local document chat.

macOS · Windows · Linux
Site Docs

Coding agents & dev tools

Tools for AI-assisted software development, from terminal agents to editors and IDE extensions.

Paid

Claude Code

Anthropic's agentic coding tool that works in the terminal, IDEs, and the web to build, debug, and ship code across a codebase.

macOS · Windows · Linux · VS Code · JetBrains · Web
Site Docs
Freemium

Cursor

AI-native code editor, built as a VS Code fork, with in-editor chat, autocomplete, and agentic multi-file editing.

macOS · Windows · Linux
Site Docs
Freemium

GitHub Copilot

AI pair-programmer from GitHub offering code completion and chat across major IDEs and the command line.

VS Code · JetBrains · Visual Studio · CLI
Site Docs
Open sourcePaid

OpenAI Codex CLI

OpenAI's open-source terminal coding agent that runs tasks in a local sandbox.

CLI
Site
Open sourceFree

Aider

Open-source command-line coding assistant that pairs with your local git repository; you bring your own model API key.

CLI
Site
Open sourceFree

Cline

Open-source autonomous coding agent that runs as a sidebar in VS Code and other editors; you bring your own model API key.

VS Code · JetBrains
Site
Open sourceFreemium

Zed

Open-source, high-performance code editor written in Rust with built-in AI assistance and collaboration features.

macOS · Linux
Site Docs

Creative tools

Tools for generating images, video, audio, and music.

Paid

Midjourney

Subscription image-generation service, accessible through a web app and Discord.

Web · Discord
Site Docs
Freemium

Google Veo

Google DeepMind's text-to-video and image-to-video model with native audio generation, available through Gemini, Flow, and the Gemini API.

Web · API
Site
Freemium

Google Imagen

Google DeepMind's text-to-image model, available through Gemini, Google AI Studio, and the Gemini API.

Web · API
Site
Freemium

ElevenLabs

AI audio platform for text-to-speech, voice cloning, dubbing, and music generation.

Web · API
Site Docs
Freemium

Suno

AI music generator that creates songs with vocals and instrumentation from text prompts.

Web · iOS · Android
Site
Freemium

Runway

AI platform for video generation and editing, including text-to-video and image-to-video tools.

Web · iOS
Site
Freemium

Ideogram

AI image generator noted for rendering legible text within images.

Web · iOS
Site Docs

Agent frameworks & libraries

Developer libraries and SDKs for building AI agents and LLM applications.

Free

Claude Agent SDK

Anthropic's SDK for building agents on the same tools, agent loop, and context management that power Claude Code; formerly the Claude Code SDK.

Python · TypeScript
Site Docs
Open sourceFree

LangChain

Open-source framework for building applications and agents with LLMs, with integrations across many model and tool providers.

Python · JavaScript
Site Docs
Open sourceFree

LangGraph

Open-source library from the LangChain team for building stateful, multi-step agent workflows modeled as graphs.

Python · JavaScript
Site
Open sourceFree

CrewAI

Open-source Python framework for orchestrating role-based, collaborating AI agents.

Python
Site Docs
Open sourceFree

OpenAI Agents SDK

OpenAI's lightweight open-source SDK for building multi-agent workflows with handoffs, guardrails, and tracing.

Python · TypeScript
Site Docs
Open sourceFree

LlamaIndex

Open-source data framework for connecting LLMs and agents to external data sources for retrieval and workflows.

Python · TypeScript
Site Docs
Open sourceFree

Google Agent Development Kit (ADK)

Google's open-source Agent Development Kit for building, testing, and deploying agents, with support for multiple languages.

Python · Java · Go · TypeScript
Site