Your AI Stack Is Slowing You Down— It’s Time to Reset

This Week

AI is only as good as your setup.

This week, I’m cleaning house—and helping you do the same.

If your AI stack feels bloated, clunky, or just… chaotic, it’s probably slowing you down more than it’s helping. Spring is the perfect excuse to audit your tools, reset your systems, and start fresh.

Here’s what we’re covering:
– Signs your AI stack is doing too much
– What to keep, what to cut
– The 3-part setup I recommend for most teams
– Why your prompts need organizing, too

Let’s get into it.

It’s Time to Reset Your AI Setup

Signs your AI stack is doing too much

You know that moment when you try to run a quick task and end up clicking through five tabs, reconnecting three tools, and rewriting a prompt for the fourth time?

That’s a sign.

Over the past few months, I’ve seen this happen to founders, marketers, people leaders and ops teams who started strong with AI but didn’t stop to streamline. What began as a handful of helpful tools slowly turned into a Frankenstack of overlapping features, half-baked workflows, and “just in case” tools no one actually uses.

Watch out for these red flags

If you are experiencing any of these “red flags” you need an AI spring clean:

1. You’re copying and pasting between tools more than you’re creating.

2. You can’t remember what each tool is for (or who on the team is using it).

3. You have multiple tools doing the same thing (because no one wanted to decide).

4. Your outputs aren’t getting better. They’re just getting… longer.

If your setup makes everything feel slower, it’s time to simplify.

What to keep, what to cut

Start by pulling up your tool list—or make one if you haven’t already.

I like to ask three simple questions:

1. Is this tool providing quality outputs I don’t have to rework?

2. Do I trust the output?

3. Is anyone using it consistently?

If you’re not getting yeses across the board, it’s time to cut or consolidate.

How to assess your current AI tools 

Most people overestimate how many tools they need and underestimate what a few well-set-up ones can actually do.

Here’s how I think about it:

• Keep the tools that save time and reduce decision fatigue

• Cut anything that adds friction, duplicates effort, or requires a user manual to operate

• Pause tools that have potential, but aren’t dialed in yet and revisit when you’ve got time to test properly

You don’t need a dozen shiny tools. You need a few solid ones that talk to each other, follow your lead, and get things done.

Build your AI stack around your core systems

Before you start chasing every new AI app on Product Hunt, get your core platforms dialed in.

Every team I work with has the same basic stack:

• Their company wide work suite (Google Workspace, Microsoft Office)

• A project management tool (Notion, Airtable, ClickUp)

• A CRM and marketing automation platform (HubSpot, Salesforce)

Each one now comes with AI baked in, and most teams are barely scratching the surface.

Identify AI functionality in your current platforms

Salesforce’s Agentforce is already changing how customer service teams operate, handling tickets, surfacing answers, and routing requests faster than most reps. HubSpot’s Breeze is helping with content creation, outreach, and follow-ups. Both Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot are making everyday tasks like writing, summarizing, and organizing easier inside docs, slides, spreadsheets, and inboxes.

If you haven’t spent time exploring these features, block a week to test your top workflows. Focus on real use cases: prospecting, campaign creation, meeting notes, reporting, deck building and so on.

See what actually works and where the gaps are.

When it’s time to shop for new tools

Once you’ve pushed your core platforms as far as they’ll go, then go shopping. That might mean:

• Smartcat for translation

• Canva or Adobe for design

• Descript for video editing

• Riverside for podcasting

• And thousands more…

And yes, ChatGPT still belongs on the list. It’s the most popular LLM (400M weekly users and counting!) for a reason. If your team is using it consistently, the Team license is worth the upgrade. You get better performing models, stronger security, shared access to custom GPTs, and integrations that go beyond the basic chat interface. 

Your prompts need organizing too

Most people think their prompts live in their heads. But if you’ve ever caught yourself saying “Wait, I had a great one for this…” while digging through old chats, you already know the problem.

Prompt sprawl slows you down. 

You end up rewriting things that worked perfectly last week, or worse, settling for something half-baked because you can’t find the version that actually worked.

How to organize your prompts

Start treating your prompt library like an asset.

• Save your best ones in a database or spreadsheet so you can tag and filter by use case

• Include a folder (or field) for sample files - LLMs love examples

• Group by task: writing, research, analysis, strategy, support etc.

• Note which version works best for each tool or workflow

There’s a great tool for this called PromptDrive—it lets you store, tag, and share prompts across your team, plus add custom fields like tone, length, or model. Way better than copy-pasting into your AI platform. That said—if you’re trying to cut tools, not add them, you can build a lightweight version of this in Notion or Workspace. The system matters more than the software.

Now’s the time to clear the clutter

That’s your spring cleaning checklist.

You don’t need more tools. You need better setup, easy to reference prompts, and workflows that match how your team works.

Taking the time to reset your processes and tech stack won’t just make your AI tools more useful—it’ll give you clarity on how work is getting done across your org, so you’ll know what’s working, what’s not, and where things tend to break.

The result?

Fewer tabs, fewer surprises, and a lot more peace of mind.

Know someone who needs this? Hit forward.

If this helped you reset your stack—or gave you the push to finally tackle that bloated tools list—forward it to someone on your team. Or send it to the person who keeps “just testing something” in the background.

See you next week.