Compare AI tools
Side-by-side: what they do, what they cost, what Kai actually thinks. Pass up to 4 tools via ?tools=claude,chatgpt,gemini.
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Coding
Image
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Writing
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Elicit S | Claude Agent SDK S | Adobe Firefly A | Cursor S | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tagline | AI research assistant for academic literature. | Anthropic's SDK for building your own agents on Claude. | Commercially safe image gen, deeply integrated with Photoshop. | VS Code fork that made AI coding actually work. |
| Category | Research | Agents | Image | Coding |
| Pricing | Free + $12-$42/mo | API usage + SDK is free | Free + included with Creative Cloud | Free + $20/mo Pro + $40/mo Business |
| Best for | Grad students, researchers, anyone doing literature reviews. | Developers building custom agents for their own company/product. | Anyone in Creative Cloud. Brands that need copyright clarity. | Developers. Non-developers who want to ship working code. |
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| Kai's verdict | S-tier for academic research. Nothing else comes close for systematic reviews. | S-tier for builders. The right primitives. What Kai is built on under the hood. | S-tier inside Photoshop (Generative Fill). B-tier standalone. | S-tier for coding. If you write code of any kind, this pays back the $20 in a day. |
| Link | Open → | Open → | Open → | Open → |