Don Allen's Substack

Don Allen's Substack

Share this post

Don Allen's Substack
Don Allen's Substack
My Complete Creative AI Tool Stack for 2025

My Complete Creative AI Tool Stack for 2025

The definitive behind-the-scenes look at the tools powering modern creative production

Don Allen Stevenson III's avatar
Don Allen Stevenson III
Jul 02, 2025
∙ Paid
1

Share this post

Don Allen's Substack
Don Allen's Substack
My Complete Creative AI Tool Stack for 2025
1
Share

The creative landscape has fundamentally shifted. What used to require entire teams and massive budgets can now be prototyped, refined, and produced by individual creators wielding the right combination of AI tools, creative software, and hardware.

After two years of testing, breaking, and rebuilding my creative pipeline, this is my battle-tested toolkit for 2025. Every tool listed here is actively deployed in client work, experimental projects, and R&D initiatives spanning animation, spatial computing, generative AI, and collaborative production.

This isn't a wishlist—it's a working system.


The AI Brain Trust

Research, ideation, and intelligent assistance

Primary Intelligence Layer:

  • Claude Sonnet 4 — My go-to for complex reasoning, code generation, and creative collaboration

  • ChatGPT — Still unmatched for certain creative tasks and plugin integrations

  • Cursor — AI-powered coding that's revolutionized my development workflow

  • NotebookLM — Google's sleeper hit for research synthesis and audio generation

  • Gemini — Google LLM highly capable and well rounded tool

  • Perplexity AI — Real-time research and fact-checking

Specialized AI Tools:

  • Whisk — Google's latest image remixing experiment

  • Meta AI — Integrated across platforms, surprisingly capable

  • OLLAMA — Local AI deployment for sensitive projects


Visual Creation Engine

From concept to polished visuals

Image Generation Powerhouses:

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Don Allen's Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Don Allen Stevenson III
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share