We write the AI guides we wished existed when we started building.

AI coverage is broken. It's vendor marketing dressed as journalism. It's influencer takes from people who never shipped a thing. It's affiliate-optimised listicles ranked by who pays best. None of it helps a builder figure out what actually generates value in production.

Agent Shortlist is the publication we wish existed when we started building with AI. Independent. Opinionated. Written for people who care whether a tool works in production — not whether it demos well at a conference.

Our readers are founders, ops leads, marketers, developers, and anyone else shipping with AI right now — regardless of technical background. Claude and Claude Code are the most common tools in their stack. We treat that as the starting point, not the destination. We don't care which AI Twitter influencer is currently hyping which tool. We care about value: revenue, time saved, productivity gains, hours back in your week.

How we test

Every platform we review gets put through real builder workflows until something breaks: sales follow-up sequences, customer support triage, internal Q&A, spreadsheet automation, and the code-adjacent tasks non-developers are now doing with Claude. We document what worked, what broke, and what we'd avoid if we were spending our own money.

We don't take vendor demos as evidence. We don't reprint marketing copy. We don't run sponsored content. We name a winner, name runners-up, and call out the platforms that are hyped but broken.

How we make money

We use affiliate links. When you click through to a platform we recommend and sign up, we may earn a referral fee at no cost to you. We disclose this on every review.

Affiliate compensation does not influence our recommendations. If we tested a platform and it failed, we say so — even if their program pays better than the winner's.

What we'll never do

• — Sponsored reviews disguised as editorial
• — Affiliate-padded rankings dressed as analysis
• — "Top 50" listicles with no opinion
• — Reviews of platforms we haven't actually used
• — Hype takes recycled from AI Twitter
• — Pretending to be neutral when we're not

Questions, tips, or platforms you'd like us to review? Email hello@agentshortlist.com.