The AI Tool Stack I Actually Use to Run Fikrago
Written by Ayoub Zinani, Founder of Fikrago
I get asked this more than almost anything else: "what AI tools do you actually use?" Not the polished answer I could give for a sponsorship. The real one — the tools open in my browser tabs on a normal Tuesday, running a one-person business with no team and no budget for a stack of paid software.
So here it is, honestly, including the parts that aren't glamorous.
Writing and research
This is where I spend most of my time, and it's the layer I trust the least on autopilot. I use AI for first drafts, for restructuring a messy idea into something readable, and for catching gaps in an argument I didn't notice. What I don't do is publish the first output. Every article on Fikrago gets rewritten in my own voice, checked against real data from GA4 and Search Console, and stripped of anything that sounds like it came from a template. The tool speeds up the boring part. It doesn't replace the judgment part.
Building tools and websites
This is the part that genuinely changed what was possible for me. I have no formal coding background, and I've still shipped working no-code apps, chatbots, and website fixes using AI to write and debug the actual code. The honest version of this: it's not magic. I still hit walls where the AI gets something wrong, and I have to describe the problem three or four different ways before it clicks. But the alternative — hiring a developer for every small tool idea — was never realistic for me. This closed that gap completely.
Image generation
For product mockups, blog featured images, and brand assets like Fikrago's mascot character, I use AI image tools with detailed, specific prompts — never vague ones. The difference between a usable image and a throwaway one almost always comes down to how much detail goes into the prompt: lighting, composition, style references, what should stay consistent across a series. I keep a running document of prompts that worked so I'm not reinventing them every time.
Automation and chatbots
This is where client work lives. Building chatbots for businesses, automating repetitive customer questions, setting up workflows that don't need me babysitting them daily. I test everything on Fikrago's own systems first before I ever put it in front of a client — my site is the sandbox.
Analytics
I lean on GA4 and Search Console constantly, and I've learned to be skeptical of both. A big chunk of my own traffic data turned out to be bot-driven once I actually dug into the city-level breakdown — Singapore, Guangzhou, Shenzhen spikes with 13-second sessions don't look like real readers. AI tools help me process and summarize this data faster, but the skepticism has to come from me. No tool flags "this traffic looks fake" on its own; you have to know to ask.
What I'd tell someone building a stack from scratch
Don't chase every new AI tool that launches. Pick one for writing, one for building, one for images, and learn them deeply enough to know their failure points — where they're confidently wrong, where they need a second pass, where they save real time versus where they just feel productive. That knowledge is worth more than having ten tools open at once.
If you're trying to figure out which AI tools actually make sense for your own business — not the hype version, the practical one — that's exactly the kind of thing I help people and brands work through. Message me if you want a second set of eyes on your setup.
See the specific tools I use on the Tools page, browse resources on the Digital Market page, or check what I've built with them on the Products page.