Product Reviews
Written by Jessica Wells
New tools, tried for real.
Everyone is talking about a new app this week. I try it myself, with real work, and tell you what it is actually like, what it is great at and where it still needs a human.
Written by Jessica WellsPart of Lifing Hard™, the writings and podcast of our founders.
Latest review
Is Pangram's AI detector accurate? It flagged my own writing 100% AI
On October 2, 2026, I put my own writing into Pangram's AI detector. Pangram said two of my notes were 100% AI.
The verdict: A detector should be a signal, not proof.
Pangram · AI text detectorRead the review · 7 min
Earlier reviews
- Gemini Notebook passed my pricing test.Google renamed NotebookLM in July. I gave the new version Meta's pricing announcement and the three questions a business owner would ask. Three right answers, two invented adjectives and a six minute podcast I did not have six minutes for.Gemini Notebook · AI research assistant
- Meta Muse is very fast. I still would not leave it alone.Meta calls it the first personal AI agent built for everyone. I gave it a week of client work instead of demo tasks. It ran more tasks at once than anything I have tried, went down while I was using it, and came back the same day. The full review has the failure logs, the fix and both independent leaderboards.Meta Muse · Personal AI agent
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