startup-tools

I work with hundreds of startups each year. These are some of the common tools I see. These are in no particular order and I am not endorsing any of these vendors.

Desktop clients

• https://github.com/aws-samples/amazon-bedrock-client-for-mac
• https://github.com/danny-avila/LibreChat
• https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui

Automation

• Claude Computer Use
• StageHand
• https://generalagents.com/ (ACE) - new foundation model
• BrowserBase
• NovaAct

Zero ETL Tools

• Stitch
• FiveTran
• AWS Zero ETL
• Debezium
• Bucado

AI Code Execution Sandboxes

• https://github.com/e2b-dev/E2B
• https://github.com/huggingface/smolagents
• https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui
• https://github.com/ColeMurray/ai-code-agent-environment

AI Coding Tools

• Cursor
• Devin
• Continue
• Cody - https://sourcegraph.com/cody
• Aider
• AmazonQ
• Windsurf
• Codebuff
• Cline
• OpenDevin
• Pythagora
• Roocode
• ClaudeCode
• Augment - https://www.augmentcode.com/
• https://www.factory.ai/
• https://duplocloud.com/home-r2

Code Execution Environments

• https://coder.com/

iOS Coding Tools

• https://rork.app/
• https://alexcodes.app/

MCP Resources

• https://mcp.so/
• https://cursor.directory/mcp
• https://playbooks.com/mcp
• https://github.com/cline/mcp-marketplace
• https://glama.ai/mcp/servers
• https://github.com/punkpeye/awesome-mcp-servers

AI coding best practices

• https://playbooks.com/
• https://cursor.directory/
• https://docs.cline.bot/improving-your-prompting-skills/cline-memory-bank

Multi Agent Frameworks

• CrewAi
• AWS Multi Agent Orch
• AWS Bedrock Multi Agent (preview)
• LangChain
• LlamaIndex
• Dynamiq
• Flowise
• Gumloop
• n8n
• Xpander
• Owl
• Autogen
• Maestra

MCP Resources

• https://mcp.so/
• https://smithery.ai/
• https://glama.ai/mcp/servers

LLM Testing & Evals

• https://www.promptfoo.dev/
• https://docs.confident-ai.com/

Observability (What's happening in my app?)

• New Relic

• Data Dog

• Post Hog

• Sentry

• AWS Cloud Watch

Exception Tracking (I want to see errors before my users do)

• Sentry
• Airbrake
• PostHog

Auth (I need to add login to my app)

• PropelAuth
• Auth0
• Clerk
• https://supertokens.com/
• Keycloak
• AWS Cognito

Agentic AI Frameworks

• https://github.com/camel-ai/owl
• https://github.com/agno-agi/agno
• https://github.com/mastra-ai/mastra
• CrewAI
• AWS Bedrock Agents
• AG2 (aka Autogen)

Structured Generation

• BoundryML (BAML)
• DotTxt Outlines / https://github.com/dottxt-ai/outlines

RPA / Browser Automation

• https://browser-use.com/
• https://www.skyvern.com/
• https://github.com/aws/nova-act (AWS Nova Act)

AI SDLC Tools

• https://github.com/qodo-ai/pr-agent (AI PR reviews)
• https://www.ellipsis.dev/

Agent marketplaces and networks

• https://soverin.ai/
• https://agent.ai/

LLM Tooling (I want to accelerate LLM integration)

• Langchain
• Langfuse
• BAML
• Zenbase - https://github.com/zenbase-ai
• Vellum
• Composio
• HumanLayer
• LangGraph
• https://www.llamaindex.ai/

Voice Agent Platforms

• Retell
• vocode

Doc Processing (I need to process documents or PDFs)

• Reducto
• Mindee
• LayoutLLM
• AWS Textract & Comprehend
• Multi-modal LLMs direct (OpenAI & Claude)
• Mistral (https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-ocr)

Email/SMS (I need to send emails/SMS)

• Twilio
• Sendgrid
• Resend

Backend frameworks

• Supabase
• Firebase

TTS (Text to speech)

• Eleven Labs
• Play.ht
• OpenAI Whisper
• Cartesia

Multi-modal open source

• https://github.com/gpt-omni/mini-omni
• https://github.com/ictnlp/LLaMA-Omni
• https://github.com/livekit/agents
• https://github.com/kyutai-labs/moshi
• https://emova-ollm.github.io/

AI Inference (I need to host or access a model)

• Modal
• BaseTen
• Beam
• Fireworks
• Groq
• Runpod
• AWS Bedrock

LLM Routers & Proxys

• LiteLLM
• OpenRouter

LLM Interoperability

• llms.txt - https://llmstxt.org/
• agents.json - https://github.com/wild-card-ai/agents-json

Models

• Llama3 Qwen
• OpenAI GPT
• https://huggingface.co/nvidia/NVLM-D-72B
• Mistral
• Anthropic Claude
• Luma
• Poolside

GPUs

• AWS
• Lambda Labs
• SF Compute
• Voltage Park
• CoreWeave

Product Tracking (Session recording)

• Fullstory
• Pendo
• Posthog

Product Analtics

• Posthog
• Amplitude

Frontend tooling

• NextJS

Design Tools

• Figma
• https://moqups.com/
• Sketch

Website builders/marketing sites

• Framer

Nocode app builders

• Retool

Prompt Engineering

• https://www.promptingguide.ai/

Payments

• Stripe

Frontend Hosting

• Vercel
• AWS Amplify

Remote Collaboration

• Miro
• https://excalidraw.com/

App Generators

• Bolt
• Lovable
• Spawn
• Marbelism

MCP Directories

• Smithery
• MCP.so

UI Generation

• https://v0.dev/
• Magic

Compliance (HIPAA, SOC2, PCI, etc)

• Drata
• SecureFrame
• Tugboat
• DashSDK
• Vanta

Backend tooling

• FastAPI
• Flask

AI Orchestration

• OpenRouter
• LiteLLM

Orhchestration & Scheduling

• Temporal
• AWS Step Functions

Serverless

• SAM
• CDK - https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/
• SST - https://sst.dev/

Infra orchestration & tooling

• Porter
• FlightControl
• CDK
• Flight Control
• Port7777

Business Intelligence & Analytics

• Metabase
• Tailscale

Landing pages

• https://www.framer.com/
• https://www.sitekick.ai/
• https://webflow.com/

CLI Helper

• https://github.com/sigoden/aichat
• ClaudeCode
• Amazon Q CLI

Audio diarization

• https://paperswithcode.com/method/sepformer
• https://github.com/JusperLee/Dual-Path-RNN-Pytorch
• https://github.com/JusperLee/Conv-TasNet
• https://github.com/asteroid-team/asteroid
• https://docs.nvidia.com/nemo-framework/user-guide/24.09/nemotoolkit/asr/speaker_diarization/intro.html
• https://github.com/speechbrain/speechbrain

Object detection

https://github.com/matterport/Mask_RCNN https://paperswithcode.com/method/retinanet

Low code/no code agents

• Flowise
• Gumloop
• Lindy
• n8n
• VectorShift

Common topics?

Prompt engineering or fine tuning?

New models are coming out every day. By the time you figure how how to find tune a new model will be released with better performance. Focus on prompt engineering and inference time fine tuning.

k8?

No, don't use Kubernetes unless you have a business requirement for it.

Safety & Bias

• https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.24190 (Bias in LLM models)

Companies and trends to watch

• https://www.instantdb.com/ (build apps with data fragments instead of data objects)