OptimalStack

About

OptimalStack covers the AI and productivity tools that people who work for a living actually adopt — what a tool does, where it breaks, and whether it is worth the subscription.

Where the articles come from

A lot of the most useful assessment of new software happens on video, by people who used the thing for a fortnight before saying anything. Very little of it exists in text. If you want to compare two tools without watching ninety minutes of footage, or you want to find that assessment through a search engine at all, you are mostly out of luck.

So we watch, and we write it down. Each article is original written analysis of a specific broadcast: the substance extracted, organised, and stated plainly, with the original video embedded at the top and the creator credited above the fold.

How the articles are made

We use AI in the drafting process, and we would rather say so than let you work it out. What that means concretely:

  • A model produces the first draft from the video's transcript.
  • A person reviews every article before it publishes. Nothing goes out unread.
  • Pricing tables, tool comparisons, and anything presented as fact are maintained by hand, because a model is not a reliable source for a number that changes.
  • We publish a few articles a day, not a few hundred. The constraint is deliberate: the ceiling on quality is how much we can actually check.

Where an article states a figure or a claim, it is because the creator stated it in the video. We are reporting their assessment, not inventing a second one, and we do not attach invented ratings to somebody else's testing.

The deal with creators

Every article embeds the original video and links to the channel, so watching on our page counts toward the creator's views. The intent is to send traffic toward the people doing the original work.

If you are a creator and you would rather we had not written about your video, tell us and it comes down within 24 hours. No explanation required.

How we make money

Affiliate commissions and display advertising. Neither buys coverage or changes an assessment — the full detail is in theAffiliate Disclosure, including what we will not do for money.

Contact

If we got something wrong, tell us and we will correct it and say that we did.