AI Guides › Workbench
By Nigel Guy · 7 min read
Most small businesses handle free tools in one of two ways. Some sign up for six of them in an afternoon, use each one twice, and end up paying for the one with the most persistent upgrade banner. Others refuse to touch anything free on principle and pay for software that sits mostly idle. Both approaches feel sensible at the time. Neither one asks the useful question: what is this free tier's limit, and does your actual job fit under it?
The rule: a free tier can replace a paid tool only when the job fits under its limit and you can get your work back out. Check both before you build a routine on it.
The mechanism here is the Ceiling Card, which is three lines you write for every free tool before you rely on it:
| Line | What you write |
|---|---|
| Replaces | The paid thing you would otherwise buy, and roughly how often you need it |
| Ceiling | The specific limit you will hit first (seats, items, uploads, export formats) |
| Exit | How you get your work out if you leave, and in what format |
If you can't fill in the Exit line, you aren't using a free tool. You are using a free trial that hasn't ended yet.
All of these are £0 for the free tier at time of writing. The vendors list their paid plans in US dollars, so check the £ figure at checkout before you compare.
| Tool (free tier) | What it does | Best for | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Free | General assistant with web search, artifacts, memory and up to 5 projects | Drafting, rewriting, turning raw notes or screenshots into documents | Session limits reset every five hours and vary with demand; no project sharing |
| ChatGPT Free | General assistant with limited uploads, image creation, voice and deep research | A second opinion, quick images, occasional deep research | Uploads and deep research are rationed; the exact allowance isn't published as a number |
| Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) | Answers questions grounded only in sources you add | Research over your own documents, policies and recordings | 100 notebooks and 50 sources per notebook on the free tier |
| Scribe Basic | Records you clicking through a web app and builds a step-by-step guide | Process documentation for browser-based tools | Web apps only; no PDF, Word or Markdown export; no redaction |
| Tango Free | Similar browser capture into step guides | Small teams sharing a handful of core processes | 5 shared workflows per workspace, up to 10 users |
| Canva Free | Design templates and layout | Social graphics, simple one-pagers | 5GB storage, a limited number of AI uses, one brand kit with three colours, no background remover |
The free plan covers web, desktop and mobile, and includes web search and up to five projects. Use one project per recurring job, such as "Client emails" or "Policies", and put your standing instructions in the project so you aren't pasting them in every time.
This is also the free way to turn screenshots into a proper guide when a capture tool won't cover your software, for example a desktop accounts package. Take the screenshots yourself in order, upload them, and use this prompt:
These screenshots are in the order I took them. They show how to [task] in [software].
Write a numbered how-to guide for a new member of staff who has never used it.
For each step: one instruction sentence, the exact button or menu label visible in
the screenshot, and what they should see afterwards. If a label is unreadable or a
step seems to be missing between two screenshots, say so in square brackets
rather than guessing. Finish with a short "If it goes wrong" list based only on
what the screenshots show.
The square-bracket instruction matters. Without it, the model will make up a plausible menu name to fill a gap, and your new starter will spend ten minutes hunting for a button that doesn't exist.
Use it to check work Claude has drafted, or the other way round. Two free tools with different limits give you more room than either one on its own. Keep the rationed features (uploads, deep research) for jobs that actually need them.
Here is a draft [document type] for [audience]. Don't rewrite it.
List up to five places where a reader could misunderstand an instruction,
quote the exact sentence each time, and suggest a fix of no more than one line.
Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook on 16 July 2026. Existing notebooks and links carried over, and the address is still notebooklm.google. Its strength is that answers are grounded in the sources you add and cite them, so it suits questions like "what does our supplier contract actually say about late delivery?" You can add PDFs, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, Microsoft Office files, web URLs, YouTube videos and audio. Each source can be up to 500,000 words or 200MB, and Sheets are capped separately.
Using only the sources in this notebook, answer: [question].
Quote the passage you relied on for each point and name the source.
If the sources don't settle it, say "not covered" and stop.
Google says notebook content isn't used to train its models unless you send feedback. On a personal account, feedback can be seen by human reviewers. Workspace accounts get stronger protection.
Both record your clicks in a browser and turn them into a step guide with screenshots, which is far quicker than writing one by hand. Scribe Basic doesn't limit how many guides you make, but it only covers web apps, has no file exports and no redaction. Tango Free keeps PDF, Markdown and HTML exports for paid plans and caps your team library at five shared workflows. Choose based on the limit you can live with: Scribe if you have many processes and are happy to share them by link, Tango if you have a few core processes and a small team.
Before you record, log in as a test user or clear any customer data from the screen. Neither free tier lets you blur or redact afterwards.
Free covers templates and basic design. Paid features include background removal and a full brand kit, and AI uses are limited. If your brand is more than three colours and a logo, you will run into the brand kit limit quickly.
| If your job is... | Start with | Upgrade only when... |
|---|---|---|
| Writing and rewriting | Claude Free, with ChatGPT Free as a backup | You hit the session limit most working days |
| Answering questions from your own documents | Gemini Notebook | You need more than 50 sources in a single notebook |
| Documenting browser-based processes | Scribe Basic | You need PDF or Word copies, or redaction |
| Documenting desktop software | Screenshots and the Claude prompt above | Ongoing volume makes paid capture cheaper than your time |
| Small graphics | Canva Free | Brand consistency across a team becomes a real problem |