If you follow my YouTube channel, you know I am always in the lab — testing tools, breaking things, and figuring out what actually works for small business owners and nonprofit leaders. This post is a roundup of what I have been building and reviewing lately, and why it all connects back to the bigger mission: building resilience that holds.
As someone who runs both a consulting firm (All Aces, Inc.) and a nonprofit (Next Leadership Development), I do not have the luxury of a large IT team or a bottomless software budget. Every tool I review is evaluated through that lens: Can a small team actually adopt this? Does it solve a real problem or just create a shiny new workflow? Is it worth the cost?
Here is what I have been testing and what I found.
Remio.ai: The AI Second Brain That Changed How I Work
I almost did not review Remio. The AppSumo deal was ending, and I was racing to get this out before it closed. But I am so glad I did, because Remio is genuinely different from anything else I have tested this year.
What Remio Actually Is
Remio describes itself as a second brain with agentic functionality, and that framing is accurate. It is not just a note-taking app or an AI chatbot. It is a unified workspace that sits on your Mac, PC, or mobile device and connects everything: your local files, your Google Drive, your Gmail accounts, your calendar, your meeting recordings, podcasts, and even web pages you browse.
In the video, I walked through the left-hand navbar, which is the control center for your entire knowledge setup. You configure what Remio has access to under Knowledge Settings. Here is where you add local file folders, connect Google Drive, link Gmail accounts (I have two connected), and attach a system calendar.
The Knowledge Base and AI Chat
Once your sources are connected, Remio indexes everything and lets you query it through a chat interface. The key difference from something like ChatGPT is that the AI answers based on YOUR content: your notes, your emails, your meeting transcripts. The browser extension is another standout feature — it lets you save web pages directly into your knowledge base as you browse, so context is captured passively rather than only when you remember to save something.
If you want to go deeper on connecting AI tools to your existing content workflow, check out my guide on creating quality content with TubeOnAI and Gemini.
Agentic Capabilities and Automations
This is where Remio truly separates itself. Beyond the passive knowledge base, Remio has an agent interface that can execute tasks on your behalf. You can trigger these manually through chat or set up automations. In my review, I used the Remio agent to connect to my Grigora website API in real time. It read the API documentation, generated the correct API calls, and executed them through a chat conversation. No code editor. No manual scripting.
The agent can also monitor your email and meeting transcripts for action items, create notes automatically, and link related content. For a nonprofit or consulting leader processing a high volume of communications, this kind of intelligent triage is a genuine productivity multiplier.
Remio vs. Alter: The Key Difference
I did a side-by-side comparison with Alter in the video. The short version: Alter is a Mac-native power tool that automates actions across your operating system and apps. Remio is a knowledge system with agentic capabilities layered on top. They complement each other rather than compete directly. If you can only pick one, ask yourself: do I need OS-level automation, or do I need a smarter way to organize and act on my information?
Get Remio on AppSumo While You Can
Alter App: Turn Your MacBook Into an AI Superpower
Alter is built specifically for Mac users, and it shows. Rather than opening a separate app every time you need AI help, Alter lives in your menu bar and overlays on top of whatever you are doing. It is ambient AI, and once you use it, going back feels slow.
The Action Editor: Built-In Workflows Out of the Box
The first thing I showed in the video was the Action Editor, and it immediately impressed me. Alter comes pre-loaded with a library of built-in actions: LinkedIn post generation, email drafting, content planning, social media templates, creative writing agents, and more. For each action, you can customize the system prompt, the user prompt, whether it runs in the background or shows on screen, and which AI tools it has access to.
This is powerful for small business owners and nonprofit leaders because it means you do not need to be a prompt engineer to get consistent, high-quality outputs. You pick the action, adjust it once for your voice and context, and reuse it indefinitely. This is similar to how I set up AI-assisted email workflows using TinyCommand.
Model Selection and Speed
Alter does not lock you into one AI model. It gives you access to dozens of models and will intelligently suggest the right one for each task, but you can also override and choose manually. In the video I tested the response speed, and it is noticeably fast even for longer generation tasks.
Chat With Any Website or Document
One of Alter's standout features is the ability to chat with any website you are viewing or any document on your computer. You highlight text, press a shortcut, and Alter's chat activates with that content in context. For research-heavy work — like the grant writing and client strategy work we do at All Aces and Next Leadership — this is a significant time saver.
Projects and MCP Integration
Alter also supports Projects, which are scoped workspaces where you can give the AI access to specific tools and context. In the video, I showed how I set up a project with access to my Grigora MCP tools to generate a blog post. This is where Alter becomes more than just a writing assistant. It becomes an agent that can interact with external platforms on your behalf.
Teable.ai: Vibe Coding Your Dream Operations System
I want to be upfront: I spent two full weeks deep in Teable before I made this video. It was not a quick review. I was building the actual operational infrastructure for All Aces, Inc. and Next Leadership Development, and Teable is what made it possible.
What I Actually Built
In the video, I walked through the CRM I built inside Teable that spans both my business and my nonprofit. All of my contacts (clients, donors, partners, volunteers) are in one unified system, with clear distinctions between organizational contexts. The CRM links to project management tables, to my affiliate and software tracker, and to a form system that lets clients update their own records without re-entering data each time.
I also built a project management system that my team actually uses daily. These are live tables being used to manage real client engagements, grant cycles, and program delivery. For context on how this connects to building a broader AI operating system, see my post on building an AI-powered operating system for business and nonprofits.
Vibe Coding with Teable's AI
The phrase vibe coding in the video title is not hyperbole. Teable has an AI assistant built in that lets you describe what you want in plain language and it builds it: tables, fields, automations, linked records, and forms. I described the CRM structure I needed, and the AI scaffolded it. I described the automations I wanted, and it built them. I reviewed, adjusted, and refined, but I was not writing formulas or SQL from scratch. This is a meaningful shift for nonprofit and small business operators who have always needed database infrastructure but could never justify the developer cost.
Embedding in FuseBase for a Client Portal
After building the system in Teable, I embedded the views in FuseBase to create a client-facing portal. This was the workflow I had dreamed of for years: a database backend with automations, surfaced through a polished client interface, all without a single line of custom code. Teable also released a new feature around the time of this video that I showed as a bonus, extending what is possible with embedded views and automation triggers.
Try Teable.ai: Use code DRMARTIN for 10% off your first month
The Thread That Ties It All Together
Every tool I reviewed this month solves a different problem, but they all answer the same underlying question that drives my work: How do you build capacity in organizations that do not have excess resources to waste?
Remio helps you stop losing context. Every conversation, every document, every meeting note becomes searchable and actionable. Alter helps you stop context-switching. It brings AI assistance to wherever you already are. Teable helps you stop improvising your operations. Real infrastructure at a price point that works for a 3-person team.
Real resilience is not about using the latest tool. It is about building systems that hold when circumstances change: when a team member leaves, when a grant cycle ends, when the platform you rely on gets acquired.
The tools I share on this channel are ones I have personally stress-tested for that standard. I would love to know what you are building. Drop a comment on any of the videos above, or connect with me directly at https://drmartin.io/kit
Frequently Asked Questions
Basic: Is Remio better than a traditional note-taking app?
Yes, because of its agentic layer. While apps like Obsidian or Notion hold your data, Remio can act on it: searching your emails, transcribing meetings automatically, and connecting to external APIs through simple chat commands. It is closer to having an AI colleague than a digital filing cabinet.
Basic: Do I need to be technical to use Teable?
No. The entire point of the video is that Teable's AI assistant lets you describe what you want in plain English. I built a full CRM, project management system, and client portal without writing code. If you can describe your workflow in a sentence, Teable can build it.
Advanced: Can I keep my nonprofit and business data separate in Teable?
Yes. I use Teable's relational structure to keep records separate at the organizational level while still maintaining a unified view of my interactions when needed. This prevents data silos while keeping your reporting and access controls clean across both entities.
Advanced: How does Alter differ from just using ChatGPT in a browser tab?
The key difference is context and access. Alter operates at the OS level, meaning it can see what you are working on right now, whether it is a document, a website, or an email. ChatGPT in a browser tab only knows what you paste into it. Alter also has dozens of models and lets you chain actions together into reusable workflows, where ChatGPT requires manual re-prompting every session.
Technical: How does Alter integrate with Grigora?
Alter uses the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to bridge your local Mac environment with web platforms. By adding the Grigora MCP endpoint to a Project in Alter, you can perform CMS actions directly from the Alter chat interface without logging into the Grigora dashboard. In my video, I demonstrated creating a blog post draft from within Alter using this integration.
— Dr. Atyia Martin | CEO, All Aces, Inc. | Executive Director, Next Leadership Development
