Claude Code vs Cursor: After 6 Months Side by Side, Here’s My Solo Consultant Pick

Code editor display, dark theme — Claude Code vs Cursor comparison for solo consultants

Claude Code vs Cursor — six months of side-by-side use on solo consultant work. I have paid Claude Code at $20/month and Cursor Pro at $20/month, used them daily across three to five client projects in parallel, and kept a running log of which one I opened first. The first three months I treated them … Read more

Notion AI vs ChatGPT for Client Briefs: My 2026 Decision Rule

Notion AI vs ChatGPT comparison for client briefs — workspace setup for a solo freelancer

A client emailed me a 6-page discovery doc on Tuesday afternoon. I had a draft brief due Wednesday morning. The first decision I had to make wasn’t what to write — it was which AI I’d open first. Notion AI vs ChatGPT — that was the actual question. I pay for both. I’ve been paying … Read more

OpenAI–Microsoft Cut the Exclusivity Knot. Here’s What Shifts for a Freelancer’s Stack.

OpenAI Microsoft deal multi-cloud partnership news — server racks illuminated with blue light

A news brief from a solo operator’s seat — what the April 27 partnership rewrite actually changes for the people paying $20–$200 a month, not the boardroom. In this post TL;DR What the OpenAI Microsoft deal actually changed First-party products stay on Azure 3 things that actually move for a freelance stack What does NOT … Read more

3 Cursor Scripts That Save Me 2 Hours a Week — No Coding Background Needed

Code on a computer screen.

The three specific automations that justified my Cursor subscription — with the exact prompts I used and the mistakes that wasted my first attempts. Content mode: Tested Two months ago I wrote about setting up Cursor as a non-developer freelancer. Since then, three scripts have survived into weekly use. Together they save me roughly two … Read more

GPT-5.5 Just Dropped — Here’s What the Numbers Say Before I Test It Against Claude Code

AI coding terminal on a laptop, solo operator workspace

Content mode: Informed — Field Report. I haven’t personally tested GPT-5.5 against Claude Code yet — this is what the public benchmarks and pricing pages say before I commit to a paid month of side-by-side use. I haven’t used this yet, but here’s what the data shows. OpenAI released GPT-5.5 yesterday (April 23, 2026), and … Read more

Cursor for Non-Developers: A Freelancer’s First Month With AI Coding

Laptop with code editor open, freelancer learning to automate small scripts

I watched a colleague type a sentence into her laptop and watch 380 mis-named photo files rename themselves in under a minute. I’m not a developer. She isn’t either. I’d been planning to batch-rename the exact same kind of folder for a client that afternoon, and I’d budgeted three hours for it in Finder. That’s … Read more

Perplexity vs Google for Research: How I Cut Pitch Prep from 90 Minutes to 15

Researcher comparing search results across browser tabs on a laptop

I used to count my pitch prep in browser tabs. Twenty-two felt normal. Company site, three competitor sites, a couple of industry reports, two or three LinkedIn pages, the founder’s podcast episode I half-remembered, a press release someone mentioned in a Slack DM. Most of those tabs were open for 30 seconds and closed without … Read more