AI tools that actually save me time as a Malaysian tech worker — my honest list
by Kevin Lim·May 25, 2026
After a year of trying almost every AI tool that gets posted about, here's what stayed in my actual workflow.
Claude / ChatGPT for drafting: First drafts of documents, emails, proposals. Not for final copy, for breaking the blank page. Saves 30—60 minutes on any writing task.
GitHub Copilot: For boilerplate, tests, and documentation. Genuinely saves time on repetitive code. Not reliable for complex logic, still need to understand what it generates.
Whisper / Otter.ai: Meeting transcription. I stopped taking notes manually. Review the transcript after, flag action items. The accuracy is good enough.
Perplexity: Replacing Google for research questions that need synthesis, not just links.
What I stopped using: Most image generation tools (not useful for my work), AI presentation tools (still slower than just doing it), AI email tools (too much tone-polishing for too little gain).