My 2026 Tech Stack (and why I'm ditching 5-year-old tools)

Hi everyone,

I’ve been thinking a lot about my tech stack for 2026.

Here’s what I realized: the tools that were built before large language models became a thing? Their UI wasn’t built around conversation. They weren’t designed for how we work with AI now.

But the new tools? Lightfield, Jace AI, Notion Agents, Claude Code, Aqua Voice. They’re all conversational. As you converse, things get done.

It’s like having lots of little AI team members. Some are generalists. Some are specialists. And the generalist knows when to call in which specialist.

That’s the dream, right? You’re an AI Operator. You have an AI that works with other AIs. You’re the orchestrator.

That dream is becoming reality. Here’s what’s running my business right now.

• Claude Code — My #1 tool. Runs my whole business and teaches me to be more technical.
• Aqua Voice — Context-aware dictation that’s saved me 20+ hours. Talk, don’t type.
• Jace AI — Replacing Superhuman after 5 years. Finally, real AI email.
• Lightfield — Replacing Folk CRM. Chat-first is the future.
• Notion Agents — Morning briefs, Friday reports, accountability I can’t ignore.

This is my number one tool. Everything runs through here.

Claude Code with Opus 4.5 runs on my computer. I have an AI Operator folder with subfolders for sales, content, and customers. Each folder has a claude.md file with all the context, instructions, skills, MCPs, agents, and workflows specific to that area.

The .claude folder at the user level is where everything major lives. You keep your general instructions in a claude.md file there. But you can also have project-specific instructions inside each folder.

As you get more advanced, you can build systems that maintain and update these context files automatically. In my sales system, I have a deal.json file for each deal. As I work, it updates those deals. That JSON file feeds everything in the sales system.

I know it looks scary. It’s on the terminal. It’s called “Claude Code.” But here’s what people miss: it’s teaching me to be more technical and systematic. I’m learning a ton.

That’s what AI Operators do. We push ourselves, and our AI pushes us back.

This is where I dictate everything. And I mean everything.

The other day I tried Scribd's new chat feature. I talked for 30 minutes. It only captured the last sentence. I wanted to delete the whole app.

Aqua Voice is different. It's context-aware. It knows if I'm on Slack, if I'm in email, where I am. It formats the content accordingly.

Think about it: when we type, we make mistakes. We go back. Words don't come. We can't type fast enough. But when you dictate? It flows.

Email, content creation, prompting, Slack messages. Anything you used to type, you can dictate. Once you practice for a couple months, you're like: why did I even type?

Aqua Voice has saved me over 20 hours in the last couple months. But it's not just time. It's the mental friction that disappears.

If you know me, you know I've been a Superhuman user for five years.

I had tested Jace AI before when it only had one inbox. Now it has multi-inbox. Rules and workflows. All driven by AI. It's like having a chief of staff for email.

What really sold me: it goes into my Notion, my Google Drive, my Slack. It finds context. It looks at my deal pipeline. It reads our service documentation. Then it answers from there.

But here's the story that blew my mind.

I have a personal email where I receive invoices for our villa complex. 19 houses share water and sewage costs. The bill is in Turkish. It's a terrible PDF. The total changes every month because we split water usage by meters.

Jace AI reads that PDF. Understands everything. Extracts the total I owe.

I created a rule: when that email arrives, it takes the PDF, saves it to my personal Google Drive, then goes to my personal Notion task database. It creates a task with the amount, sets a deadline, assigns it to me, and puts the Google Drive link right in the task.

All automatic. All from a messy Turkish PDF.

Superhuman promised AI features a year ago. Maybe 10% shipped. Jace AI already does all of it.

I paid my last month of Superhuman and canceled. I have one month to decide. Right now? I don't think I'm going back.

Folk CRM has been great. I've used it for years. But it was built in the Notion era. Table-based. That's still their direction.

Lightfield is chat-first. I asked it: "What deals might I be forgetting?"

It went through all my emails. Found a potential deal I completely forgot. An intro that never got scheduled. Holidays came. It just sat there.

Lightfield created the deal for me. Said: "Their company is strong. Matches your ICP. You should reach out." Then it gave me the email to send.

That's not just saving time. That's catching revenue I would have missed.

By the end of this month, I'll be fully on Lightfield. It syncs to my Notion deal pipeline too, so the context stays connected across everything.

Everything in our company runs in Notion. And Notion Agents are changing everything.

They're still in beta. But because everything lives in Notion, they have all the context.

I built a Friday agent that summarizes what we did and where we're blocked. A Monday agent that prepares the week. And a morning brief agent that runs every day.

The morning brief is incredible. It shows my priorities from the Notion CRM. Reads team comments. "They need your approval on a guide." Checks previous morning briefs for unchecked items. "Did you finish these?" References the last meeting. "You talked about this priority but didn't get it done."

It creates my whole day. Tells me where to focus as a founder. It's like having an accountability partner that never forgets.

Even with Lightfield as my CRM, I sync everything to Notion. Context matters. Notion is where that context lives.

• Granola — My meeting note taker. I also use Notion's built-in meeting notes to keep context in one place.

• Raycast — Replaced Apple Spotlight years ago. Never looked back.

• Stoic — Daily journaling. Love it.

• NotebookLM — Custom podcasts about what I'm learning. The other day I was walking my son to sleep and listened to one about systems thinking and first principles. That's my obsession right now.

Peak season is here. Most retail and ecommerce teams face the same problem: volume spikes, but headcount doesn't.

Instead of hiring temporary staff or burning out your team, there’s a smarter move. Let AI handle the predictable stuff, like answering FAQs, routing tickets, and processing returns, so your people focus on what they do best: building loyalty.

Gladly’s ROI calculator shows exactly what this looks like for your business: how many tickets AI could resolve, how much that costs, and what that means for your bottom line. Real numbers. Your data.

See your savings

• Claude Code — My #1 tool. Runs everything. Making me more technical with every project.

• Aqua Voice — 20+ hours saved. Context-aware dictation for everything I used to type.

• Jace AI — Replacing Superhuman. Reads PDFs, finds context, automates the boring stuff.

• Lightfield — Replacing Folk. Found a forgotten deal and told me to reach out.

• Notion Agents — Morning briefs, Friday reports, accountability I can't ignore.

One more thing.

I know this might feel overwhelming. Even Andrej Karpathy said he feels behind. I was talking to a friend who held one of the most important roles at a top company in the world. He said he felt like he was going to burn out.

If you feel like that, you're not alone.

This year, I made a decision. Mental health first. Physical health first. I meditate. I close my computer at 10pm. Phone goes into blocked mode. Every screen, every app. I just read books. Then sleep.

A friend told me I'm in the 0.1% of people working with AI like this. My wife reminded me that just about the only thing I haven’t done is build a large language model. She's right. Those people are the 0.01%.

But here's the thing: what you see in this newsletter shouldn't scare you.

Pick up one or two things. Maybe Aqua Voice. Maybe a Notion agent for your Friday report. Maybe a CRM that actually finds your forgotten deals.

It's not just time you save. It's brain power. It's energy. You stop draining yourself on boring tasks you dread.

And then you have a choice. What do you do with that newfound energy?

Scroll Instagram? Watch negative news? Or learn something new? Meditate? Go to the gym?

I'm getting philosophical. I never was before. But I think we all need to.

What's your purpose? What's your goal?

That's the real question for 2026.

Thanks for reading 😊

Tim

P.S. — No referral links in here. But if a tool excites you and you want one, just ping me. Happy to share.