The production stack
I spent months trying tools that looked good in other people's reviews. Most of them didn't survive contact with an actual weekly production schedule. What you see here is what stayed: six tools, most under thirty dollars a month, each one solving a problem I couldn't work around.
Affiliate disclosure
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. This disclosure is required by the FTC (US), Canada's Competition Bureau, and the ASA (UK). Affiliate relationships do not influence which tools appear here — I only recommend what I personally use and would recommend without any commission.
Voice cloning · AI narration
I recorded about five minutes of my own voice. Uploaded it. A few hours later, every episode had narration that sounded like me without me sitting at a microphone at eleven at night. That is what I was looking for. Something repeatable, not perfect.
AI avatar · Talking head video
I sat in front of my phone camera for about two minutes in decent natural light. That recording became the avatar that now delivers every episode. Upload the script, get the video back. About fifteen minutes per episode. I have not been on camera since.
Video assembly · B-roll · Captions
This is where the episode comes together. Avatar footage, voiceover, B-roll, captions, all assembled without me opening a video editor. Getting the workflow right took a few sessions. Running it now takes almost nothing.
AI writing · Agent orchestration · Research
The honest answer to how one person runs an automated YouTube channel: Claude does most of it. Research, scripts, compliance reviews, upload scheduling. I direct what needs to happen and Claude handles the execution. I was not paid to say that. I built the whole system on it.
Project workspace · Templates · Knowledge base
This is where the channel strategy lives. Topic pipeline, episode notes, planning documents, research. The AI layer handles first drafts and summarizes long documents faster than I can read them. I use the free plan for all of it.
Workflow automation · API connections · Scheduling
When two tools need to talk to each other and neither one has a built-in connection, this is where I build the bridge. It takes some getting used to, but once you understand the logic, it handles things that other platforms would charge you twice as much for. I use the free plan.
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Book recommendation
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Book recommendation
AI, automation, and second-act income books tested and recommended.
Book recommendation
Practical books for professionals building income systems outside their 9-to-5.
Not everything that got recommended to me made it here. Some tools I tried and dropped after a few weeks. Some I was offered commissions to promote but never actually used. What's here earned its place in the actual production schedule. When something stops doing that, I'll say so and remove it.
Free download
A setup guide built from a year of weekly production. Which tools, which prompts, what order to bring them in. You can read it in an afternoon and start the same weekend.
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