Fifteen minutes is enough to know whether an AI tool deserves a slot in your workflow: if you spend them on the right checks. This is the same checklist our editors run before a tool earns its listing, and it works just as well for your own stack.
Minutes 0–3: the free-tier reality check
Sign up and use the real product, not the demo video. The free tier is where tools tell the truth about themselves:
- Is the core feature available without a card, or is the "free" plan a brochure?
- Do you hit the wall after three tasks, or can you finish real work?
- Is the paid price posted honestly, or is the pricing page a sales-call form?
A tool that hides its pricing behind a call has already told you something.
Minutes 3–6: data retention and export paths
Check two things: the data policy and the export settings. You want three answers: what is stored, for how long, and is your content used for training by default? Then find the export path: can you get your work out in a usable format today, without emailing support? A tool you can't leave is a tool that owns you.
Minutes 6–9: the 3-task test
Run three tasks on your material, not the vendor's samples:
- One easy task: the obvious use case. Does it just work?
- One representative task: the actual job you'd hire it for, at real complexity.
- One adversarial task: messy input, edge case, the thing that breaks demos.
Grade all three against what a careful human produced. Most tools pass the demo and fail the representative task; that's a fail.
Minutes 9–12: pricing math
Price per seat is theater. The real math: (expected monthly usage × the plan that covers it) versus the hours the tool replaces. Watch for seat models that count bots or collaborators as humans, usage meters that reset on calendar days instead of rolling windows, and annual-only discounts that lock you into a tool you've used for fifteen minutes.
Minutes 12–15: the trust check
Read the changelog and one recent review from an account that isn't the maker's. A tool shipping fixes weekly is telling you the failure you found is already on someone's list. A tool whose only updates are landing-page redesigns is telling you something too.
Fifteen minutes won't make you an expert, but it reliably separates the tools worth a month of your attention from the ones worth a shrug. The checklist is deliberately boring: that's what makes it work.