What AI tools does a heavy Claude Code and Codex user actually pay for?

Transcript

0:00 I want to talk about the budget-friendly AI services that I use. I think you'll really like this if you have a lower budget, but it is actually for power users, though.

0:10 So I have Claude and Codex, all $200 subscriptions. For Claude, I use it mainly for creating my custom software. I made my own video editing app. So basically, I shoot the video on my iPhone, and it'll send it to my computer, and it'll do the edits for me, just like right now.

0:28 For Codex, I do a lot of fact checks and evaluation checks on what Claude did, and a lot of the automations, like UI automations, are done by Codex. For YouTube thumbnails, I use Codex, obviously. It has a great image generator.

0:44 For Gemini, I think I have tried one month. There are mixed feelings. Some people say it's a great deal. For me, I think I'm going to cancel it, because honestly, it has a lot of perks in it. Also, if you're a US citizen and you are getting all those extra benefits, then I think it's worth it. But for someone who's outside of the US, the benefits are pretty low, and you can pretty much get better outputs, or a better outcome, if you're using Claude, honestly.

1:09 I don't have a video generator. I was trying to use Gemini Omni for that, but it just has so much limitation. You can't do browser automation to create videos for you. So let's say you want to create a certain scene, and then you create all these images, and the video prompts are ready, and I use Aside and ego lite to automate this process. But then they will somehow block you, even though you're a paid subscriber, and you can't even do that. For me, it just doesn't make sense.

1:37 I guess they wrote it in the terms of service not to use bots or something. It's really frustrating, because you're getting 25,000 Flow credits. That's the only reason I subscribed. You can't even use all of that. Really? You're going to prompt it manually to create all these videos? You think you're going to prompt 10 hours per day to create these videos? No, I don't have time for that. So I'm very mad at Google right now, although they have fantastic engineers. I personally don't think Gemini is worth it for me.

2:04 T3 Code, on the other hand, is my sort of orchestrator for agents and the computers that I use. My computers are a MacBook and Linux. So I have a Linux box running, and both of them are connected to each other. Some work that needs to be done on the MacBook, it'll work on the MacBook; some work that needs to be done on Linux, it'll do on Linux. T3 Code is for organizing those agents and making guardrails and loops for that.

2:32 It's actually a lot easier to use T3 Code once it's installed. The first thing is really hard. If you just have one MacBook, I don't suggest using T3 Code. There's no point. If you have another Linux box, then yeah, it is a lot worth it. You can just ask for whatever work you need to do, and then, without interrupting, you can close your MacBook and go somewhere, and the work that you asked for will be working on your Linux box. You can continue from where you left off. That's the main selling point, I guess. Also, the shortcuts and the UI are a lot cleaner than other agents. There's no exact name for this, but this is the UI that you need to control a lot of agents.

3:09 Self-hosting costs somewhere between, I guess, $20 and $40 per month. I think mine is a lot beefier than that, probably $50 to $100, what I'm using, because it has a GPU in it, and I use it for a lot of testing new AI models, like image models, music models, video models, so I needed that. So it's a lot more expensive, but it'll cover the cost within 8 to 12... I mean, I honestly think it already covered the cost. I created tons of images and videos on it.

3:37 I personally suggest going with a used Linux computer. Just buy a PC first. You need to have a USB to boot it. Boot whatever Linux distro you want. I suggest Ubuntu if you're a first-timer. If you know what you're doing, use Omarchy, I think. A lot of the engineers are working on this project to make it better, and I can feel it's getting better, and it has a lot of cool things going on.

3:58 One thing I like is there's a program on GitHub that allows you to use it like a Mac. So every once in a while, I have to type something or do certain operations that require the administrator password. It's a lot easier to use the familiar keyboard, as on the MacBook.

4:14 Aside and ego lite, I think, are the best combo. For researching on social media and websites, I use ego lite. If there's a bot protection, I use Aside to do it. It can't go through Flow, but it does a great job connecting to government websites, or some sort of forms that you have to fill in, which are tedious to do. It will just do it. Also, you can set up automations, and it'll remember them and fill them in for you, instead of you typing 10 different forms, which is great. It saves a lot of time.

4:44 Also, it's free. If you have a Claude and Codex subscription, you can just freely use it. I don't think you need their subscription to use their service, although they give you some perks if you subscribe to their Pro or Max subscription. I think it's for power users. I honestly don't need it.

5:00 FluidVoice: I'm surprised, it's a lot better than what I expected. It's pretty fast. It shows you the words you're saying. Also, it sort of auto-corrects it for you. So for a free tier, it's pretty great. If you're using Wispr Flow or some other dictation app, the paid apps are definitely better than the free ones, but I don't really need the paid ones as of now. I'm not sure if I will gain that much productivity, but we'll see.

5:25 Everything changes really fast, but right now, for sure, something that's not changing is the two biggest: the Claude and Codex $200 subscriptions. I'm anticipating that the new model is going to drop from OpenAI soon, so hopefully that will make me stay. If not, I think I'm going to add another Claude subscription, because I usually run out of it, and use other AI services for image, API-based, which means pay-as-you-go AI services for image and video generation.

5:56 Local video and image generation is almost catching up. I'm not sure when, but I think within six months we'll have something very useful that you can run on your computer. So I suggest buying a 3090 Ti plus a 12- to 32-core PC, if you're a power user, for sure. You can get maximum value out of it, and you're not going to regret it. If you don't have automation going on behind the scenes 24/7, then you don't really need it. But everyone is racing right now to automate everything. A lot of the easy automations, you just have to ask: do this for me, XYZ, and it will just do it for you. It's super easy.

6:33 Right now, I even created a MacBook fan app that can adjust the temperature according to my keyboard hotness. There wasn't a fan app that could do this, but I created one. I didn't like the MacBook auto fan thing, because it doesn't really take the keyboard temperature into account. It'll just make either the fan really loud or the keyboard really hot, so that I don't want to use it.

6:56 What I have created is a sort of new algorithm to make the keyboard a lot cooler and the fan a lot quieter, and it doesn't go up and down like crazy. It's not something super hard. You just have to ask it to do it. A few prompts, and it will just do it for you. Something small, but it improved my life. That's how you use Claude and Codex.