Yesterday's Top Launches: 5 Tools from February 13, 2026 | thistools

Yesterday brought an interesting mix of new developer tools and platforms to the scene, showing a clear trend towards automating complex workflows and injecting more creativity into technical processes. From AI-driven video production to evolutionary skill-building arenas, February 13th’s launches are worth a closer look.

Skill Soup

Imagine taking the concept of natural selection and applying it to artificial intelligence. That’s the core idea behind Skill Soup, an evolutionary arena where AI agent skills are submitted, built, and then compete for survival based on community votes. It essentially gamifies the development of AI capabilities. Community members suggest ideas, builders race to create the most effective skills, and then users vote, creating a form of digital Darwinism where only the most useful or clever skills thrive.

This is a fascinating approach for developers and AI enthusiasts who are tired of siloed development. Instead of building in isolation, you’re throwing your code into a gladiatorial pit to see how it stacks up. The benefit is a constantly evolving repository of skills that have been vetted by real users, potentially accelerating practical AI applications. It’s free to use and accessible via web and API, making it easy to jump in either as a creator or a critic. The success of this will live or die by its community engagement; without active participation, the evolutionary pressure just doesn’t exist.

Visual Editing by DatoCMS

For developers working with headless CMS platforms, there’s often a trade-off between developer flexibility and editor friendliness. Visual Editing by DatoCMS aims to erase that line. It provides true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing capabilities directly within a headless environment. This means content editors can see their changes live as they make them, complete with draft modes and real-time updates, without developers having to build a custom preview pane from scratch.

This is a significant quality-of-life improvement for teams. The developer gets to keep the benefits of a headless architecture, while the content team gains an intuitive, visual editing experience that feels more like WordPress or Squarespace. It solves the classic problem of content editors being intimidated by JSON blocks or markdown fields. If your project involves non-technical stakeholders who need to manage content frequently, this free tool could dramatically reduce the back-and-forth and training time. It’s a pragmatic solution to a very common pain point.

EditWithAva

Video editing is notoriously time-consuming, requiring both technical skill and a creative eye. EditWithAva steps in as what it claims is the world’s first AI assistant video editor that works with your raw footage. It doesn’t just apply simple cuts; it semantically understands the content of your video. This allows it to automatically select the best scenes, cut out retakes or mistakes, and assemble a coherent edit based on your initial idea.

For content creators, marketers, or anyone who needs to produce video regularly but lacks the time or expertise for deep editing, this is compelling. The promise of going from a pile of clips to a publish-ready video through simple prompts is powerful. However, the real test will be in the quality of the semantic understanding. Can it truly grasp narrative flow or the emotional tone you’re aiming for? If it works as advertised, it could democratize video production in a big way. The free pricing model at launch is certainly an attractive entry point to find out.

Scout Program

The world of early-stage investing is often opaque and inaccessible. Scout Program turns it into a transparent, public competition, modeled after fantasy sports but with real money. Each season, ten “scouts” are given $100,000 each to invest in startups. They build their investment thesis publicly, and their decisions and performance are out in the open for everyone to see.

This is a brilliant concept for demystifying venture capital. Aspiring investors can learn by observing the strategies and rationale of the scouts. Founders get exposure to a new set of investors who are incentivized to make smart, visible bets. For the scouts themselves, it’s an unparalleled opportunity to build a track record with real capital. The “free” aspect here is for spectators and applicants; the scouts are the ones deploying real funds. It’s a bold experiment that could change how people learn about and engage with startup investing.

Starnus

Outbound sales is a grind. It involves relentless lead generation, data enrichment, personalized outreach, and campaign tracking. Starnus is an AI-powered platform designed to automate this entire process for founders and B2B sales teams. You provide a simple prompt describing your ideal customer, and the system supposedly handles the rest: finding leads, enriching their data, crafting personalized emails, and managing the follow-up sequence.

For small teams with limited bandwidth, the allure of an autonomous sales assistant is undeniable. It promises to free up human effort for closing deals rather than prospecting. Being a paid service right out of the gate suggests the founders are confident in the value it delivers. The obvious question mark hangs over the authenticity of the outreach. In an age of inbox saturation, can AI-generated messages truly build genuine connections, or will they contribute to the noise? It’s a tool that could be incredibly efficient, but its effectiveness will depend on the sophistication of its AI and the strategy behind its use.

Quick Links to Yesterday's Launches: