I Work Across 7 Tools—So Why Can’t One AI Just Answer My Questions?

Like many teams, our work tools are a mix of six or seven different services: Gmail for email, Slack for chat, Asana for project management, SharePoint and Google Drive for storage, and Notion and Airtable for organizing shared knowledge.

Each of these tools now offers an AI search that lets us ask questions of the data we’ve created inside that specific service using natural language. And, for the most part, these AI searches are paid add-ons.

Some of them even claim to reach beyond their own walls. For instance, Notion AI can query data within Google Drive, and Slack can analyze data in attachments within a Slack workspace, but not within Drive or SharePoint. Further, Slack can’t see inside Airtable or Asana. And SharePoint can’t see inside…well…anything else.

These upgrades add up fast—often $10-$30 per user per month just to get this hodgepodge of coverage.

And don’t get me started on Dia, the browser that can superficially see whatever happens to be open in a browser tab, but not the rest of your organizational knowledge.

As an end user, what I want is simple: one service that I can pay for, that can answer questions across everything.

A prompt like “What did we pay Brandon on the Connor Project last year?” should search my Slack history, Google Drive, Gmail, and Asana comments—and just give me the answer.

I want an open ecosystem of search. The search should be a commodity. If you want AI search, then pay $10/month per seat to the service of your choice and you’re set.

And the decision of which one to buy should be based on the quality of the app itself and how it presents the data, not the firehouse.

Can we get there in 2025? We’ll see.

How are you piecing together AI search across your work tools? Let me know in the comments below or on Threads or BlueSky.