Hi First name / there!

 

A few months ago I mentioned I was planning to talk about AI in this newsletter, then didn't, because I was feeling really overwhelmed by it at the time. A few of you reached out saying you'd be interested in my thoughts, so here we are!

 

I've been hesitant to talk about AI because I have genuinely mixed feelings about it. I'm not a cheerleader, but I'm also not picking up a pitchfork. I fall somewhere in the middle, I think it can be a useful tool, but I also have real concerns about things like environmental impact, job loss, and people using it to replace creativity and critical thinking.

 

At the same time, I do believe it can be useful, and the genie's not going back in the bottle. It's also just a lot right now. It's changing so fast and showing up everywhere, which makes it feel like there's something new to learn constantly. A lot of the tools and subscriptions I already use now have AI built in, and I haven't even explored most of it. But there are a handful of tools I've found genuinely helpful, and for me it comes down to this: can it take the boring, mundane tasks and make them faster, or give me something to bounce ideas off of? Never just copy, paste, and move on without rereading and reworking it myself.

 

 

Wispr Flow — I love talking things out loud, this is so much easier for me than writing. Parts of my newsletters and blog posts are voice memos transcripts that I’ve edited. But a transcript is full of "um"s, "like"s, and repeating myself, so I'd still have to rewrite a lot of it. I even tried feeding transcripts into Claude and asking it to clean them up, but it kept rewriting things in a way that didn't sound like me. Wispr Flow does the same thing as a voice note, but it strips the filler words and organizes the words in paragraphs and even bullet points. Just a lot less cleanup work on my end.

 

Savvy by Squarestylist — for coding help, I don't lean on AI much. I still turn to plugins, blogs, and YouTube, but sometimes I just want to bounce an idea around or figure out the right class to use. I've tried a few tools; Claude isn't bad, but Savvy is the best because it's trained specifically on Squarespace.

 

RightBlogger — I'm better at talking things out loud, so I record my YouTube videos first and turn them into blog posts after. RightBlogger takes the video and generates a blog post from it. I don't use it word-for-word, I still rework a lot, but it gets it into a written format to start from. I've also used it for transcribing my mini-course videos.

 

Squarespace's SEO AI tool — I wrote a blog post about this one. I'm not big on it for SEO titles and descriptions; if you can get an SEO expert or copywriter to write those, it'll be more impactful. But it's a solid option for a client building their first site who doesn't have budget for that. What I really love it for is alt text. I wish you could jump straight to the alt text instead of having to do the meta titles and descriptions first, but still, it's a favourite.

 

Next month I want to dig into AI and clients specifically, what I'm noticing clients bring to me now, what rules other designers seem to be setting around it, and (spoiler alert) a story about a time I said no to a client's AI request. I think having your own values and boundaries around this matters.

One thing I keep coming back to with AI: it's a great tool, but it shouldn't replace the humans building genuinely useful things. A lot of small Squarespace plugin shops have been struggling lately as more people turn to AI to write custom code instead of buying a plugin. I get the appeal, but these are small businesses making plugins that are more reliable, better supported, and often faster to implement than anything you'd cobble together with AI. So consider this your reminder to support fellow Squarespace creators when you can. 💖

 

I updated my favourite plugin shops post with a new discount from Will Myers, so if you're looking to add some extra functionality to your site, this is a good place to start.

Add a link to a Stack: You can now make stacks clickable! Add a URL to a stack using the link icon in the editing toolbar. Very excited about this!

 

Pay links for domains: From the Domains dashboard, you can now create and share checkout links to accept payments without a website as long as you have an active Squarespace Payments account.

 

New donation block: All 7.1 site owners can now update legacy donation blocks to the new block, which adds features like recurring donations and adding multiple funds.

 

Native LLMs.txt support: Squarespace 7.1 sites can now generate an llms.txt file, a plain text file that gives AI tools a curated summary of your site's key content. I'm a little curious why Squarespace added this in, since none of the major LLM providers have actually confirmed they read or act on these files yet. But, I went ahead and filled mine in since it took a few minutes (I kept it simple), but I wouldn't spend a ton of time on it right now. It might end up mattering down the line, but for now, I'd treat it as a "nice to have" rather than a priority.

Currently…

Planning my trip to Ottawa and Montreal to visit my brother and sister-in-law in late September for my Q3 break. One of my goals this year was to take a full week off every quarter, doesn't have to be travel, just a week off from working and my normal routine. It's been one of the best changes I've made this year. If you have any can't-miss spots in either city, hit reply and let me know! 🍁