Open any "best AI tools of 2026" list and you drown in jargon — API, tokens, backend, self-hosting — and usually finish one subscription poorer. Half those lists are ads in disguise, written by a company that ranks its own product #1.

This book does the opposite. I'm a solo indie maker in Hong Kong who ships real apps, a YouTube documentary, and all my own marketing on a Mac mini, on a tight budget. I'll explain every creative AI tool the way I'd explain it to a friend over yum cha: **what it actually IS in real life, what it really costs, and whether you even need to pay.**
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> Because here's what nobody selling a subscription will tell you: most of the time, the free version is enough — and the "industry standard" everyone tells you to buy is just burning your money.
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> **Volume 1 covers the fun, creative half:**
> - AI chat & writing — and why most people need exactly one $20 plan (and many need $0)
- AI images — including how I make them for **free**, locally, on my own Mac
- AI video — the fastest-moving category, and why "just use Sora" is now bad advice
- AI music — and the commercial-rights trap that can quietly make your songs unusable
- AI voice — plus which tools actually handle **Cantonese** (the Western lists skip this)
- AI slides — killing the blank page without paying for another subscription

Every tool gets an honest frugal verdict, the free-tier traps laid bare, and a date stamp — because these prices change every few months. No hype. No aggregator pumping. Just the cheapest path to a good-enough result.

— Ray Law