As we continue building Elements 3 and expanding support for third-party AI tools via MCP, we’d love to understand what everyone is using.
Which AI tools are part of your workflow on macOS? Select up to 3 that apply in the poll below, and if we’ve missed one, let us know in the comments.
What AI do you use on your Mac? (check all that apply).
ChatGPT
Claude
Grok
Gemini
Perplexity
Cursor
Local (BoltAI, LM Studio, etc).
Other (specify in your reply below)
0voters
We’re also interested in how you use them. Is it for writing code, generating content, building websites, image generation, research, or something else?
What AI service do you want to use with Elements AI?
Your feedback will help us decide which services and workflows we should prioritise when we launch Elements AI.
I started using ChatGPT, then switched to Grok. But when Elements came out with Claude integration in the CMS, I switched to Claude. I’ve found Claude works best for my long form writing tasks, integration of the desktop app with the Elements CMS. I’ve also started using Claude for custom components for my own Elements DevPacks. I love the Cowork feature, working with project folders on my Mac.
Claude does not do image generation, but it does provide custom prompts to use with an image generator. Claude helped me to create my own Ai Image Generator and Editor app with local Ai generation using open source models. This has filled my need to use online Ai for image generation.
It also helped me create a Snippet Expander application that I use with Outlook email for my secular job.
At this point, I am a huge Claude and Elements fan!
I use ChatGPT Codex mostly, but also ChatGPT Work as well. I use to help build web apps such as a reimbursement management system, fundraising campaign site, prayer request management system, iOS apps, etc…
I’ve created a custom GPT that I’ve been working with for almost two years now. I actually just left a comment about this because I was watching your building a web page with Elements AI video. Basically, what I was wondering is if we can use a custom GPT and link it to this in some way. Offhand, I’m guessing the answer is no. The reason why is, obviously, I’m already building a relationship with it, and because I have somewhere to upload backend stuff, it understands more how I think.
However, a different way to look at this would be, are we able to build context with the agents inside of Elements? Meaning, over time, do you retain previous interactions so it has that to reference as previous context?
And secondly, can you have a conversation with it first? Can you go back and forth and just discuss the concept, what you’re trying to do? I’m trying to reach some kind of alignment with it, with the ideas I’m trying to work around. If that’s possible, before it does any kind of code or tries to apply anything, that would be really amazing. That’s the way I work with AI, and so it would be nice if I could do that here.
You’ll be able to connect ChatGPT to the Elements MCP, I’ll do a video on that next week to show how it works. But yes, in your custom ChatGPT project you’ll be able to tell it to work inside of Elements!
In Elements, the project generally contains the context, not the agent. This is important as you’ll have different ideas, styles, and details for different websites.
Absolutely, you can chat about the project and work out the details before the AI does anything. It works exactly the same as you’re used with your current apps., this is because it’s powered by ChatGPT/Claude.
I use Claude for projects requiring great depth of research and first draft. Gemini is pretty creative at organizing things and creating images. For awhile I stopped using ChatHPT. But the newer version is again a very good natural language tool.
Of course all these are just tools. They require learning to provide good prompts. Often a very simple change in the prompt, a nuance can result in a very significant difference.
Claude is also best with large projects and digging deep. The project has over 400 pages, 340,000+ words, and at last count over 5700 internal links. It has been very good at keeping track of every single one of them. I’m really hoping I can drag all of that into an MCP connection and thereby into Elements when I start building it. It’s going to build all of the schema data from the front matter that’s already complete and then create custom components to work with elements of CMS.
If what you’re saying about being able to use MCP to connect this with my pre-existing custom GPT, I would love to learn about that, and that would be fantastic! Especially when it comes to, and not just the design, I’m a designer already. So that’s not been the primary thing. But content and structure, hell yeah!
Of course, I got the fact that because you can choose different agents, what you are containing or maintaining, if anything, is the context itself, basically the interaction. What I was more wondering is that, you know, every time you come back to it, is that context saved in the system so that it’s always able to refer to everything that else has happened previously when building all the rest of the pages in the site? Sounds like the answer is yes. Technically matters less because of the first question being answered. But for those who don’t use a custom GPT, that’s still an important answer.
Also with the third answer, the first answer makes it moot. However, again, for people who don’t use custom GPTs, that’s important as well. I don’t know how many people really appreciate how much a difference it can make to work out your ideas and refine them a bit before actually having your AI agent take action. It can just, it can save a lot of time, especially if what you’re trying to build has any real level of complexity to it.
I started off using ChatGPT (free version) and then Grok (free version). I subscribed to the paid version of Grok from January this year until recently.
I now want to try Claude as I’ve never used it before and I like the way it’s integrated into Elements CMS which I plan on buying.
I’ve used Claude (I have the Pro version) to build a calculator/place-an-order page in html that I plugged into an Elements project, and also built a magazine article style website just for fun, where Claude does the research and article writing. I’ve used ChatGPT only to create images and for general questions. Being able to have Claude build a site in Elements would be fabulous.
