When’s the last time you closed Claude?
For many marketers, these reasoning models have become constant companions. Heck, there’s even an app aptly called Amphetamine now that keeps your chat boxes running even when your window is closed.
And while these models are immensely powerful, there are tremendous risks to putting all of your eggs in one tool basket. Plus, the AI world is much wider than Codex of Cowork.
So buckle up my fellow explorers (and don’t forget our friend Boots), cuz we’re going on an adventure.
This blog explores some of our favorite AI tools, all of which go well beyond a chat interface to support your deep work. So you can offload the busywork (or the stuff beyond your wheelhouse) to AI, and stay firmly in the driver’s seat to direct the work that only humans can do: creativity, connection, taste, and discernment.
Let’s take a look at our 7 favorite tools that aren’t LLMs:
1. Notion AI: the business brain where context compounds
Most AI tools have a memory problem. You re-explain your brand voice every session, re-upload the brief, start from scratch every time. Notion AI fixes this because the work already lives there.
Our workspace started simple: a database of custom AI instructions (formerly our custom GPTs) so we could invoke the right client voice without re-explaining everything. Then we added meetings, client context, content management, CRM, time tracking… The list goes on. And each layer compounded the value of Notion as our business brain. Now it’s the one place where the work and the context its based on live (and update) together.
AI’s role: Synthesizes data for briefs, surfaces patterns in our work, automatically updates key data sources, supports users with an on-brand first draft every time
Human’s role: Curate brand context, use Notion AI as an assistant/coach to retrieve data and walk you through Syntropy’s approved processes.
Checkpoint: We once tried letting AI auto-generate our meeting agendas. Reading and prioritizing the output took as much effort as preparing one manually. AI can surface the material. Deciding what actually matters in the room is still yours to own.
Try Notion AI free for 3 months! And if you get stuck, come to AI office hours and we’ll nerd out.
2 Postbeam.ai: the social signal layer
How did LinkedIn management come to be such a beast?
Twelve tabs open, 4 Reddit threads on repeat, last month’s analytics piling up in a heap of stuff you’ll review that mythical “someday.” Then suddenly it’s Thursday and you still haven’t posted anything worth posting.
Postbeam is what we use to draft always-on brand, strategy-aligned LinkedIn content instead. Postbeam scans what your audience is actually talking about across LinkedIn, Reddit, and whichever other sources you connect. Then Marv (their handy voice agent) interviews you to capture post-worthy tidbits. Postbeam then crafts LinkedIn captions based on your interviews, brand context, and social listening data.
Best of all, we have an MCP agent that connect Postbeam to Notion, so we can pull analytics data into our content engine and publish
AI’s role: Collect signals, suggest angles, handle approved scheduling.
Human’s role: Choose the tension worth responding to, turn signal into a defensible point of view.
Checkpoint: Postbeam pulls the data. A human still has to analyze it. Monthly review: top wins, top improvements, what to test next.
Use code HillaryVIP for 20% your first 3 months.
3 Lovable: turn a rough idea into something people can try
As a words girlie, there was nothing more frustrating that being able to picture the design I want, but being unable to describe it…design just isn’t my wheelhouse and I don’t have the vocab.
Canva Pro opened whole new worlds to my literary brain. But even that was limited because I could only design what I could drag and drop. With Lovable, I can design anything I can imagine (AND rest assured that the AI will follow the UI/UX best practices I don’t even know exist. Because it’s a purpose built tool.
Lovable is a vibe coding platform that turns rough concepts into functional, user-friendly prototypes without forcing you to frankencode your way to success.
One approach we love: building a public-facing tool that lets people try a concept without needing full access to the Syntropy’s workspace. Lower friction entry point, real signal, before you commit to building the real thing.
AI’s role: Generate the first interface, wire up a prototype quickly.
Human role: Define the input, the output, and the role of your design in the broader marketing funnel.
Checkpoint: Test mobile behavior, form delivery, and failure states first. A prototype proves the experience before you commit to production.
4 Opus Clip: create the first cut from long-form video
Raise your hand if you’ve ever watched the same 10 seconds on repeat to figure out where exactly to cut… Or spent wayyyyyyy too long trying to find a freeze frame where your face doesn’t look ghastly… (Both of mine are up).
Opus Clip finds candidate moments, creates rough cuts, adds a first pass of captions, and resizes for short-form, so you’re not manually scrubbing through footage looking for the good stuff.
We have used it as a fast first-pass editor for long Bloomberg interviews, getting to a set of candidate clips without touching a timeline.
AI’s role: Find candidate moments, create rough cuts, add captions, resize for short-form.
Human’s role: Choose the best moments to support the strategy, fix pacing and captions, add brand elements.
Checkpoint: Finish in CapCut or Canva when the clip needs hands-on control. Watch the full clip with sound before approving.
5 Napkin AI: make an abstract B2B idea visible
Designing simple B2B infographics for incredibly complex products is HARD. I used to spend hours pouring over competitors’ designs, borrowing this iceberg idea, drawing inspo from color coded lines, etc to create a Canva chimera that sorta got the point across (if you knew what the point was to begin with).
Not only was this work incredibly time-consuming, but it left too much open to the individual designer’s interpretation. We’d build templates, but human would inevitably deviate from those templates until we lost the common thread uniting the brand aesthetic.
Then Napkin AI entered the chat.
Napkin AI is a brilliant tool that offers a library of infographic styles you can choose from. It also allows you to paste your text and the AI will suggest the best visual structure for you: diagrams, comparisons, infographic directions. No design background needed, no starting from a blank canvas. You pick the direction that communicates the idea, tweak the colors or text, and walk away with a visual worth sharing.
AI’s role: Propose visual structures, turn text into diagram or infographic directions.
Human’s role: Simplify the key message & copy, select the structure that actually communicates it.
Checkpoint: Treat the output as a concept. Rebuild it in Canva, verify labels and logic, and route anything client-facing through a human designer.
6 Gamma: a visual scratchpad for words-first marketers
Sometimes you need to see an idea before you can decide if it’s worth building. Just: does this deck hold together? Is that narrative flow the best for this landing page?
Gamma turns a prompt or a doc into a presentable deck, one-pager, or landing page in minutes. We reach for it when an idea needs to look shareable before it’s anywhere close to finished, so you can learn what works without committing to a full design build.
AI’s role: Suggest layouts, grouping, hierarchy, visual directions.
Human’s role: Own the narrative, choose a direction, add the details that make it feel intentional.
Checkpoint: Pull the strongest concept into Canva and rebuild it. Route high-stakes work through a human designer.
7 NotebookLM: turn topic context into an interactive podcast
You know the feeling when you’re stuck on a difficult client challenge, your team is offline, and you need to think it through with someone. NotebookLM is what we reach for in that moment.
Load it with trusted sources on one topic and it creates a podcast-style conversation you can listen to on a commute, walk, or travel day. No extra screen time, and unlike a static article, you can interject, ask questions, and steer toward the part you need to unpack.
AI’s role: Turn source material into an approachable audio discussion, explain connections, respond to follow-up questions.
Human’s role: Curate the sources, frame the challenge, interrupt when something needs clarification, decide what applies.
Checkpoint: Treat it as a learning and ideation session. Capture the strongest takeaways afterward and verify any claims against the original sources before they shape client strategy or published content.
Most people never get past the chat box. They open it, type a prompt, and wonder why everything sounds the same.
These 7 tools are what’s missing from that picture: each one does a specific job better than a general-purpose chat window, and each one works best when a human is still in the driver’s seat. That’s the setup worth building.
If you’re ready to turn Notion into your business brain…
Try Notion AI free for 3 months! And if you get stuck, come to AI office hours and we’ll nerd out.