The AI tools market for content creation has gotten harder to navigate. There are dozens of tools, overlapping features, and marketing copy that makes every product sound the same. This is not a sponsored overview or a ranked list with affiliate links. It is a description of what we actually use in our studio and why.
The core tool: Claude Code
Most of our content generation runs through Claude Code. Not the chat interface, the terminal application that has access to our files and can run multi-step workflows. Claude Code handles caption generation, email sequence drafting, competitor research analysis, blog post creation, and weekly planning. We run it through skill files, markdown documents that tell Claude exactly how to approach each task with the correct voice rules, output format, and step-by-step process.
The reason we chose Claude Code over other tools is the file system access and the ability to build persistent context. Our brand document, our voice rules, our past examples. Claude knows all of this because it is in files in the project folder. We do not re-explain our brand every session.
Apify for research and scraping
Apify is a web scraping platform that connects to Claude Code through an MCP server. We use it primarily for competitor content research. The competitor audit skill calls Apify to pull recent posts from competitor accounts across platforms and passes that data to Claude for analysis. Our monthly spend is typically under 0.
Publer for scheduling
Publer is our publishing and scheduling tool connecting to LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. More importantly for our system, it has an API that Claude Code can call directly. The content generation and scheduling steps happen in the same session. We do not copy and paste.
Fal.ai for image generation
When we need a featured image for a blog post or a supporting graphic for a social post, we use Fal.ai. It is fast, the API is straightforward, and the cost per image is low enough that it does not need careful rationing.
What we stopped using
We stopped using standalone copywriting tools that required filling in fields and clicking through a wizard for every piece of content. The output was never quite right for our brand voice, and the workflow did not connect to anything else. The pattern we noticed: specialised single-purpose AI tools are being replaced by the ability to build your own specialised workflows in a general-purpose tool. The general-purpose tool knows your brand. The single-purpose tool does not.
The total monthly cost
Claude Pro: 0. Apify: approximately 5 at our usage level. Publer: 5. Fal.ai: typically under 0 for our image generation volume. Total: under 5 a month. We replaced tools that collectively cost over 00 a month and produced lower-quality output.
If you want a walkthrough of the exact setup, book a free call. We will show you the file structure, the skill examples, and how to get to usable output in the first session.
