6 Great AI Tools Lead Engineers Need Their Teams to Adopt

I’ve seen an enormous divergence in how teams are approaching AI. I’ve spoken to hundreds of engineering leaders about AI adoption. They almost invariably fall into one of three camps:

Camp 1: “We’re avoiding AI.” It’s an operational risk/security risk, so until it’s better understood, we’ve got policies to avoid it.

Camp 2: “We’re allowing our people to use AI.” There’s no policy around adoption, but our engineers are using GitHub Copilot, and we let them try things out in ChatGPT.

Camp 3: “We’re actively adopting AI.” They’ve got a person (or a task force) responsible for working out how to adopt AI, and they’re open-minded about the potential gains.

What people in Camp 1 and Camp 2 don’t realize is that the people in Camp 3 are making enormous gains.

We asked 200+ companies to tell us about their AI adoption. Those adopting AI said they’d already worked out how to use AI to ship 2.5x faster.

Let that sink in!

That means teams who are actively adopting AI are reclaiming 3 hours out of every 8-hour day.

And those same teams expect to be saving 5 hours out of every 8-hour day in a year.

If that isn’t a competitive advantage, I don’t know what is.

As an engineering lead, you’re in the hot seat to usher in this new era of AI-enhanced software development.

So here’s a list of six best-in-class AI tools your team should absolutely be leveraging before this year caps off.

1. Sourcegraph Cody

Sourcegraph Cody accelerates your code writing with AI.

Imagine a tool that can read, understand, and answer questions about your entire codebase as well as internal documentation. That's Sourcegraph Cody. This tool promises to speed up coding tasks by a factor of 10.

Best features:

• AI-assisted code autocomplete
• Codebase-aware chat and commands
• One-click unit tests
• Spots code smells in real-time

My view: Sourcegraph Cody is the next-generation tool from GitHub Copilot. It excels in larger projects where speed and understanding of the existing codebase are crucial.

Alternatives: Mutable offers slimmed-down solutions with similar feature groups.

Check out Sourcegraph Cody

2. Grit

Grit automates the management of your technical debt.

Tired of manual code migrations and dependency upgrades? Grit aims to automate these often tedious tasks by auto-generating pull requests that follow best practices. It even claims to complete migrations 10x faster.

Best features:

• Auto-generates pull requests for code migrations
• Monitors for regressions in your codebase
• Accelerates dependency upgrades

My view: For teams bogged down by the weight of legacy code and tech debt, Grit is a lifeline.

Check out Grit

3. What The Diff

What The Diff streamlines your code review process.

This tool will not only suggest changes in your pull requests but also generate summaries for technical and non-technical team members.

Best features:

• Instant code refactoring with quick commands
• Summarises pull requests into digestible overviews
• Reporting and notifications

My view: If your team is churning out pull requests at a high velocity, What The Diff is the assistant referee you never knew you needed.

Check out WhatTheDiff

4. Stepsize AI

I’m building this tool with my team at Stepsize, and I would love to hear about your use case and your thoughts. As engineering leaders, processes and tools for alignment are second nature. We’ve had to adopt them to make alignment feel possible.

But, at best, we (and our engineers) lose 30% of our time trying to get aligned. We do synchronous things like having meetings and asynchronous things like sending Slack messages, and we sift through our systems of record – think Jira, Linear, or GitHub – to find what we need.

But really, we’re hardly ever properly aligned.

Stepsize AI’s Operational Intelligence Engine observes and reflects on everything that happens in the tools you use to collaborate, including Slack, Jira, Linear, and GitHub.

Then, it creates powerful, reliable updates based on its contextual knowledge of your projects and activity. For example, you can configure:

• Daily standups
• Team syncs
• Sprint reviews
• Kanban reviews
• Executive summaries

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It’s all about staying in the loop without drowning in the data.

We designed it to be able to:

• Achieve alignment effortlessly: Navigate the complex web of information channels to foster alignment between business units, teams, and individuals.
• Spend less time in meetings: Shift focus from information-sharing meetings to impactful work.
• Enable visibility and foster transparency: Imi
• tate the "water cooler effect,” bolstering team unity, shared work habits, and culture. React swiftly, miss nothing: Ensure no opportunity or risk goes unnoticed, irrespective of the volume of data across tools.
• Reduce context switching: Maintain team efficiency by reducing interruptions and promoting uninterrupted workflow.

So, if you’re tired of tedious meetings and spending hours connecting the dots, I’m hoping Stepsize AI is going to be the go-to solution. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Find out more about Stepsize AI.

5. Mintlify Writer

Mintlify Writer automates your code documentation.

Documentation is often the last thing on a developer’s mind (or at least, the last thing they want to be on their mind), but it’s still an imperative part of any project. Mintlify Writer understands your code and generates accurate documentation in an instant.

Best features:

• One-click comprehensive documentation
• Understands a wide range of programming languages
• Context-aware to produce relevant descriptions

My view: Writing docs isn’t really a valuable use of your engineers’ time, and – generally speaking, at least – it’s not a popular part of the job. Docs can end up being incomplete and inaccurate because it’s often an afterthought. So, Mintlify Writer is a lifesaver, and it's especially useful for large, complex projects where documentation can become overwhelming.

Alternatives: Scribe is a more generalist tool that can be used for auto-generating documentation.

Check out Mintlify Writer

6. Otter AI

Otter AI is your AI-powered meeting assistant.

If you're drowning in meetings, let Otter AI be your lifeline. It can join, record, and summarise your meetings, allowing you to focus on the work that actually matters.

‍Best features:

• AI chat for meetings
• Automatic AI meeting summarisation
• Automated slide capture
• Live transcript summary

My view: Otter AI is a universal tool, beneficial for teams large and small, technical or otherwise. It’s pretty great for any use case, like catching up on missed meetings, remembering what happened on sales calls without having to rewatch the whole thing – anything like that. It’s a huge time saver.

Check out Otter AI

The Final Word

Alright, so there you have it – six AI tools that are ready to help your team elevate their game before 2023 ends.

Some teams treat AI like a fad. Those aren’t the teams unlocking 350% efficiency gains.

Be in the latter camp and turn AI into a competitive advantage (before your competitors do!).

Got time to share your feedback? I’ve built Stepsize AI to enable your teams to stay aligned so you can cancel hours’ worth of status update meetings and know what’s happening effortlessly.

I’d love to hear about what your use case is at your org.

Also published here.