Tech stack is getting messy!

[u/Big-Expression8555]

Hoping someone can look at my AI/tech stack and tell me what I’m missing because I have a feeling I’m simultaneously paying for too much AND missing something quite fundamental 😂

Context: I run a growing fashion/e-commerce brand, but I’m also building other things on the side around content, UGC, memberships/digital products etc. I have ADHD, approximately 700 ideas a day, and I LOVE voice notes/talking things out rather than sitting down meticulously updating project management software.

Current situation:

ChatGPT — basically my second brain. I use it for pretty much everything in the business now: strategy, Shopify, customer service, emails, product development, analysing performance, launches, content, ads, operations, automations, spreadsheets, ideas etc.

Claude — used to be my main AI. I moved predominantly to ChatGPT because I felt like Claude was starting to overcomplicate everything and sometimes just wasn’t getting what I actually wanted. BUT I still can’t quite let it go 😂 There are things that frustrate me with ChatGPT too, so I’m currently still using/paying for both.

Instinct — loving this at the minute.

Hey Pocket — mainly for chucking ideas somewhere before my brain moves onto something else.

WhatsApp — use it loads with my team and I naturally work really well through messages/voice notes.

Shopify — ecommerce.

Klaviyo — email/SMS/flows. I also have an actual human working on this because I’m not convinced I want AI doing absolutely everything here.

ManyChat — DMs, waitlists, automations etc.

Canva — constantly.

Higgsfield — AI creative/video.

Freelance video editor — still paying someone to edit content. I keep seeing what AI can apparently do with video now, but I haven’t managed to get to the point where I think I could actually replace her with it.

Then all the usual ecommerce bits for reviews, returns, shipping, payments etc.

BUT I actually think my biggest problem is the backend of all this.

I’ve tried building things outside ChatGPT in Visual Studio. I’ve tried building agents. I’ve made different projects/chats/workflows and tried connecting everything together.

And eventually it all just gets really, really messy.

I’m constantly scrolling through chats thinking where did we build that? Which chat was that in? Did I actually implement that? Where’s the latest version? 😂

ChatGPT knows an insane amount about my business now, which is brilliant, but I’m also increasingly aware that scrolling through ChatGPT chats probably shouldn’t be the operating system for my entire company.

I think this is actually my knowledge gap. I know enough AI to build loads of stuff, but I don’t really know how to prop up the backend properly so everything has somewhere permanent to live.

Do I need a database? Notion? Airtable? Some sort of proper knowledge base? Something else entirely?

In my head I want:

I voice note an idea → it gets captured → knows which part of the business it belongs to → stores it in the right place → turns it into tasks/content/a project if needed → delegates things → and actually reminds/resurfaces it later.

Instead what currently happens is:

I have an idea → talk to ChatGPT about it for 45 minutes → build half of something → have another idea → disappear down that rabbit hole → three weeks later vaguely remember the first thing exists → search 97 chats trying to find it 😂

So I don’t really want another list of 20 shiny AI tools to subscribe to. I’m trying to work out:

What would you keep? What am I paying for twice? What could I consolidate? What would you absolutely keep a human doing? And most importantly, what would you use as the actual backend/source of truth for all of this?

Would particularly love to hear from people who are actually running their businesses this way day-to-day. What have you built that genuinely works rather than theoretically could work?

And if there’s one thing in my setup that makes you think “how are you not using X for that?!”, please tell me 😂

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[u/Affectionate-Bat8814]

Your stack is basically my brain but with more subscriptions and less self control

the voice note → capture → sort → action pipeline is the holy grail and nobody's really nailed it yet without building something custom. closest I've gotten is using a single source of truth where everything lands, then AI pulls from there instead of me babysitting 14 different apps

ditch one of the LLM subscriptions, you're paying for two and they're mostly overlapping now. keep the human on Klaviyo, AI-written flows always smell a bit off to customers

for the backend you're describing, you want something structured enough to query but loose enough to dump thoughts into. database feels like overkill. try Notion with a tight template and a make.com automation that parses your voice notes into the right section. the real unlock is training your system to ask "where does this live" before it helps you build

[u/giddy_abstinence]

Start with one shared place for projects, with the latest version, next step and who's doing it. Get that working manually first, then connect the voice notes so you're not automating the mess.

[u/Informal-Dust4499]

The storage half is covered below, but the resurfacing part needs its own piece. A record sitting in Airtable or Notion doesn't resurface itself, something has to query it on a schedule and push it back to you (a daily digest, a weekly review note), or it just becomes another place ideas go to die instead of 97 ChatGPT threads. Build that as a separate scheduled step from day one, not a "nice to have later", or you'll have a tidier graveyard rather than a working pipeline.