Tools I use

These are tools I use on computers pretty much every day.

AI stuff

Pi

Pi is great. It does just what you need it to, while giving you the flexibility to do whatever you want. I love it. It's my daily driver.

Foreman

Foreman is a tool I built to switch between agent sessions easily and see what needs my attention and what's active, all a keystroke away.

ai-config

So many harnesses, so many skills, so much customization. ai-config lets me keep them all in sync extremely easily.

Codex

I mainly use the Codex app for coding from my phone. It has a nice UX.

Oracle

Useful when you need the hardest-thinking review. Or for two-line emails.

Terminal

Neovim

Neovim is my default editor. I was born in the mines of Neovim and will never let it go, even though these days I spend less time typing code. I still love the keybinds and customization.

tmux

Turning the terminal into a persistent workspace with endless customization. I love it.

Ghostty

Everything you want in a terminal. More importantly, nothing you don't.

mise

mise is a nice interface for all kinds of coding projects. I mainly use it as a basic task runner without anything fancy.

chezmoi

chezmoi keeps my dotfiles in sync and lets me customize some of the sharp edges around all the weird tools I've integrated to my setup.

Atuin

Terminal search history everywhere. It's nice.

Search and knowledge

Obsidian

I stick everything in Obsidian and let AI manage the upkeep. "Second Brain", but less productivity porn and more easily save and remember everything. I wrote more about how I use it.

Obsidian Sync

A tool I built that syncs my Obsidian vault as a Git repo, making my knowledge highly portable. Bonus points for using Working Copy plus some iOS Shortcuts to keep it synced to my phone too.

qmd

One of the only semantic search tools I've found lightweight enough to use day to day. Keyword search plus AI still goes surprisingly far, but it's nice to have semantic search when you need it.

fzf

Fuzzy selection that makes all kinds of terminal and TUI tools better.

zoxide

No more cd ~/that/directory/.... z plus a fragment gets me to the directory I always use.

Mac stuff

Homerow

A nice tool to speed up clicks and avoid using the mouse.

Hammerspoon

A surprisingly versatile tool that I use frequently to build small quality-of-life shortcuts.

Rectangle

A keyboard window manager. I pretty much just use it to maximize windows.

MacWhisper

Rock-solid software from an indie developer. I recommend buying the lifetime license to support them. I'm currently using Parakeet with the hotkey for transcription.

Zen

I'm an Arc refugee. Zen is the closest alternative I've found.

Bitwarden

Because I can't remember my passwords. Also, I shouldn't.

Self-hosting

Cloudflare

If you need it, Cloudflare has it. Keeping everything in the ecosystem is quite nice.

Tailscale

Because you shouldn't be port forwarding. It makes connecting devices easy.

Doppler

A nice secrets manager that keeps credentials portable across machines and secure.

OpenTofu

Infrastructure as code for self-hosted systems.

Small tools I miss when they're gone

bat

Like cat, but readable.

eza

Prettier file lists.

uv

Remember pip? lol. uv offers great portability (you can even use it as a shebang line in scripts) and is pleasantly boring to work with.

btop

I pop this up when my computer's about to crash.

croc

Sometimes you just need to send a file from one machine to another. This is an easy way to do it.

Homebrew

Because I'm not smart enough to use Nix, and it works well enough on macOS and Linux.