🧰 Smart tools. Useful tips. Weekly.

Hola friend 👋,

I’m Josep. Each week, I hunt down practical tools and productivity hacks to help digital doers like you do more with less effort.

This week: the tools I’m actually using right now.

It’s easy to get distracted by shiny new apps, especially when every week brings another “game-changing” launch. But the tools that really matter are usually the ones you keep opening without thinking.

Today, I’m sharing three tools that genuinely help me publish this newsletter faster, work with better context, and make decent visuals without pretending I suddenly became a designer.

Plus: a smart off-topic tool for AI search and topical authority, a quick digital decluttering hack, and a slightly worrying story about what happens when AI agents get too much freedom.

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TinyPNG

Image compression

If you publish online regularly, oversized images quietly slow down your site, your workflow, and sometimes your patience too. To compress images, I use TinyPNG, which saves me more friction than other flashier apps.

It takes 30 seconds, and my process looks something like this:

Drag & drop the images
TinyPNG compresses the image
I download the images

But it also goes beyond that with format conversion for AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG, plus an API, a CDN for delivering images quicker, and even a WordPress plugin.

I use it constantly for images in this newsletter because it's fast and boring (in the best possible way). No learning curve, no endless settings, just lighter files that are easier to upload and kinder to page speed.

It's ideal for bloggers, creators, and small teams who care about faster pages without turning image optimization into a whole side quest.

🛠️ Alternative to: ImageOptim, ShortPixel, Squoosh

👉 Visit: tinypng.com

💰 From $3.25/month | Free plan available

Claude Code

AI coding

Are you hearing all the hype about Claude Code, but not quite getting what the big deal is? I first tried it for a ‘small’ coding task, repurposing an old WordPress theme I had lying around. It worked great.

Claude Code (and Codex) is a big reason I barely use AI in the browser anymore. Instead of asking questions, I’m actually building things (like Robert did with his Chrome extension or my Semrush clone) and creating content right from my laptop.

And no, you don’t need to be a developer. I’m not. Let me tell you what I use it for:

Translating and localizing content (e.g. swapping in relevant links for each language automatically)
Generating content that actually sounds like me, using a simple local file with context about my style and personal life
Connecting to any platform or service that has an API
Pulling files directly from my Google Drive and creating new ones automatically

I’ve even used it to replace SEO tools like Ahrefs. I gave Claude Code my Keywords Everywhere API, and now I can just say, “I want to create a post about X, find relevant keywords and build me a spreadsheet with the results.” It does the research and structures everything for me.

Honestly, this feels like a real shift in how work gets done. And if you’d like to know more, I’m putting together a full newsletter issue on it in the next couple of weeks.

🛠️ Alternative to: ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot

👉 Visit: claude.ai/code

💰 From $17/month | No free plan available

Adobe Express

Design tool

Adobe Express sits in that funny category of tools I don't obsess over, but still end up using a lot. It's very Canva-like (if I'm honest, I still prefer Canva overall), but Adobe Express is genuinely strong and has a clear advantage (for me at least).

I use it mainly to put together video thumbnails quickly, generate or tweak background visuals, and other small visual resources I need to create for this newsletter. Features like quick resizing, templates, and of course, ease of use are part of what make it such a useful tool.

That matters because I am not a designer, and Adobe Express doesn't require me to become one. It helps me get to “good enough to publish” without disappearing into a design rabbit hole for an hour. The reason I use it over Canva is simple: it’s included in my Adobe subscription, and of course, it’s still a great tool.

🛠️ Alternative to: Canva, VistaCreate, Kapwing

👉 Visit: adobe.com/express

💰 From $9.99/month per person | Free plan available

✨ Totally Off-Topic… But Brilliant

Floyi AI

I used to love SEO and worked on it for many years (I still do the occasional bit here and there). But with Floyi, I’m still in that early “okay, what exactly is this thing?” phase. Floyi can be pretty impressive if you run a large content site and rely heavily on organic traffic.

Floyi is a content planning and creation tool built around topical authority: mapping content opportunities, creating SEO briefs and drafts, tracking rankings, and keeping an eye on search visibility in one system. In other words, it is designed for hardcore SEOs that want to audit (and improve) their site authority for a certain topic.

I like that it’s more than “just another AI writing tool” because it focuses on the bigger picture: strategy. Floyi analyzes your site, compares it with competitors, and surfaces content opportunities so your website can become a go-to reference in your niche.

🛠️ Alternative to: Surfer, Frase, manual work

👉 Visit: floyi.com

💰 From $49/month | Free plan available

⚡This Week’s Productivity Hack

You don’t always need a new tool to feel more productive. Sometimes, the fastest upgrade is simply… less noise.

Here’s a quick 10-minute reset that punches way above its weight:

Turn off non-essential notifications (phone + desktop): Most apps default to “interrupt mode”. Go into settings and keep only what’s truly urgent, like calls, calendar alerts, or messages from key people. Everything else can wait until you check it on your terms.
Use OneTab to tame tab chaos: Instead of juggling 20+ tabs, collapse them into a single list. It’s surprisingly freeing, and your browser will run faster too. Bonus: you can restore only what you actually need.
Clean up your desktop: Create 2 to 3 simple folders like “To sort”, “Active”, and “Archive”. You don’t need a perfect system, just something that removes the visual mess.
Delete old files: Every few months, look for large files that are hogging your storage and delete the ones you don’t need. On a Mac, you can use Finder to filter for files bigger than 100 MB (you’ll probably uncover a lot of forgotten junk).

Why this works

Every notification, tab, or file is a tiny decision waiting to happen. Even when you think you’re ignoring them, your brain is still quietly tracking them in the background (so is your computer). That’s just one more thing competing for attention. Over time, that constant low-level noise adds up and slows you down far more than you’d expect.

🍿 Plot Twist of the Week

According to Axios, researchers behind an AI agent called ROME watched it go off-script. Instead of just doing its job, it tried to mine cryptocurrency and even opened a reverse SSH tunnel (which is basically like leaving your backyard door wide open). That’s scary, and it created extreme security breaches.

More and more tools are being pitched as “agents” you can set loose on real systems. And yes, they can be incredibly useful. But safe by default? Not quite.

The takeaway isn’t exciting, but it matters: when using AI agents, keep permissions tight, monitor what’s running in the background, and don’t assume “helpful assistant” means harmless.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! Next time, we'll look at smarter ways to plan, make, and recycle social content without living inside every platform all week.

Cheers,

Josep

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