It's been three years since my last tools post blew up, and holy hell has the landscape changed. Back in 2022, we were just dipping our toes into remote work. Now we're swimming in the deep end, and the tools that separate great PMs from mediocre ones have evolved dramatically.

I'm 10+ years in the Product game and I wanted to share what's actually helping me ship better products in 2025, not just the trendy stuff, but the tools creating real leverage in my day-to-day work.

Claude by Anthropic

The AI assistant wars continue to rage, but Claude has become my unfair advantage. While everyone debates prompting techniques, I'm using Claude for the stuff that actually matters: challenging my assumptions, ruthlessly tearing up any kind of Product docs to make them stronger, and overall, helping me to actually see and think about more.

I still talk to PMs who are essentially using a Ferrari to deliver mail. They're asking Claude to rewrite emails or polish JIRA tickets, the digital equivalent of using a kitchen knife to open Amazon packages. Meanwhile, I'm running massive pattern-recognition exercises across customer interviews, usage data, and market trends that would take weeks to process manually.

One superpower most PMs miss entirely: Claude's Artifacts. While everyone else is fighting for attention with yet another Slack thread, I'm dropping polished landing pages that communicate new features and product concepts with the visual impact they deserve. In a world where internal attention is as scarce as external customer attention, this is game-changing.

Pro tip: create different Claude Styles to help level up as a Product Manager. Instead of having a friendly version of Claude that agrees with everything you say - why not have a version that challenges your assumptions, plays a bit of devil's advocate, and tells you what you need to hear - not just what you want to hear.

bolt.new: Code Without Coding

Let's cut through the BS: Most "no-code" tools are just glorified form builders that collapse under any real complexity. Then bolt.new came along and actually delivered on the promise.

Unlike the endless parade of "AI coding assistants" aimed at developers, bolt.new is built for people who have zero interest in becoming engineers but need to ship actual working products. As a PM, this is revolutionary.

I've used it to create fully-functional prototypes in hours instead of waiting weeks in the dev queue. Not janky wireframes, but actual working apps with authentication, data persistence, and deployment ready for user testing. bolt.new handles backend logic, database connections, and deployment without forcing me to become a part-time engineer to connect the dots between layers.

The greatest testament to bolt.new's power? My side project graveyard has come back to life. Ideas I've had collecting dust for years because they were "too technical for me to build solo" are now live products. Check out my personal site (built with bolt.new, naturally) to see what I've shipped on nights and weekends. This isn't just a prototyping tool, it's an idea-to-reality machine that's transformed how I think about what's possible.

Pro tip: The AI-assisted dev tool space is exploding. While bolt.new works best for my workflow, don't sleep on Lovable, same.dev, and Windsurf. Each has distinct strengths, and at this point, it's more about fit with your thinking style than objective superiority.

Figjam by Figma

Miro dominated the whiteboard space for years, but Figjam has pulled ahead for product work. The templates are actually useful (not just pretty), and the Figma integration means you can seamlessly move from ideation to design.

I've ditched slide decks, documents, and spreadsheets entirely. Everything I build now starts in Figjam, weekly leadership updates in "Now, Next, Later" formats, roadmaps, retrospectives, and discovery sessions. The difference is night and day.

My team's discovery sessions have transformed from painful exercises in extraction to collaborative swarming. We throw up a few empty sections with provocative questions, set a timer, and let everyone attack the problem simultaneously. After a quick review, we iterate and repeat. No more awkward silences or dominant voices, just rapid ideation that actually produces results.

Want the template for my end-of-year retro that had our executive team calling it "the most productive reflection session we've ever had"? DM me. I'm not guarding these workflows—good product culture lifts everyone.

Google Meet + Gemini

I'm pretty sure I've used every single video meet platform that exists (RIP Around!) - and finally, in 2025, I can confidently say: Google Meet is the best. It's not because they added fancy backgrounds or cute reaction emojis, it's because they built something that just works, doesn't need a dedicated app that you have to download, and now with Gemini - makes remembering decisions and important points in meetings, effortless.

The Gemini integration means I'm actually present in meetings, instead of frantically typing notes or worrying about what's going to be forgotten. Gemini captures everything, automatically extracts action items, and creates a searchable knowledge base across all meetings. Finding exactly what the CTO said about the data architecture three months ago takes seconds, not hours now.

Let's talk about the elephant in the meeting room: third-party recording tools. I've watched competitors install sketchy browser extensions that silently vacuum up every product strategy session and performance review to train their "proprietary AI." No thanks. At least Google is transparent about what they're capturing and how it's being used.

The worst offenders are those stealth recording apps that run locally without notifying participants (looking at you, Granola). Nothing kills psychological safety faster than wondering if your brainstorming session is being secretly recorded and fed to an algorithm. Trust is non-negotiable for effective product discussions, and Meet's clear recording indicators and permission controls actually respect that reality.

Loom (Still 👑)

Loom remains the undisputed champion of asynchronous communication. Three years later, and I still haven't found anything that beats it for quickly explaining basically anything without scheduling yet another meeting.

Some of the ways I use Loom:

• showing potential improvements to UX to share with my designer
• recreating customer reported bugs to share with my engineers
• communicating important feature releases to internal teams
• talking over my quarterly roadmap (built in Figjam) to share with my leadership team

Pro tip: After you record your Loom, take the transcript and feed it into Claude (or your favorite AI assistant) to see if what you are saying out loud in the recording, is actually what you want to get across.

Linear

There's project management software, and then there's Linear. The difference is like flying Spirit versus Emirates First Class.

What makes it superior isn't fancy features, it's the speed and thoughtfulness. Every interaction is keyboard-optimized. The views actually match how delivery teams think. And it's blazingly fast when every other tool feels like wading through molasses.

Linear continues to innovate in the space as well - I'm extremely keen to see what they continue to do with their new "Pulse" feature - a new way to stay in sync with product updates and discussion.

X for AI Intelligence and Research

Despite its many problems, X.com remains the central nervous system for real-time AI developments. Following the right mix of researchers, founders, and practitioners gives me a 3-6 month advantage over PMs who wait for trends to hit mainstream tech publications.

The signal-to-noise ratio is terrible, but the signals are worth it. I've discovered most of the tools on this list through X before they had formal marketing or PR.

Pro tip: Create a dedicated list of 50-75 AI practitioners and check it daily. Everything else can wait. Want eyes on my list? DM me!

Notion Calendar

The calendar is the most underrated product tool. It's literally the API to your time, yet most PMs treat it as an afterthought.

Notion Calendar has changed that for me. The automatic meeting categorization shows exactly where my time is going. The focus time blocking actually prevents people from scheduling over it. And, the UI just looks clean and sleek - I actually look forward to using Notion Calendar, how many other business critical apps can you say that about?

I also really enjoy that Notion Calendar continues to try and innovate on what may seem like a well tapped market (Claude tells me the the world's oldest known calendar dates back to around 8,000 BC) - evident by a recent feature "Share availability" that lets users send a link out so that people can book meetings with them in their available slots - a shot at Calendly no doubt, a tool that charges at minimum $10 for similar features.

Final Thoughts

The tools that matter aren't the ones with the most features or the flashiest marketing. They're the ones that solve real problems in your workflow and create leverage.

What separates these tools from the endless parade of productivity hacks isn't how they look in demos. It's how they perform under pressure, when you're racing to validate a concept, communicate a vision, or make a hard pivot based on new information.

Each tool in this list has earned its place by doing one thing exceptionally well: removing friction from the work that actually matters: understanding users and building products that solve real problems. Everything else is distraction.

What's creating leverage in your product work? Not what looks good on your screen, but what's genuinely changed how effectively you deliver value? Drop your recommendations in the comments or DM me, I'm constantly hunting for the next unfair advantage.