The Tools I Actually Use
Not a definitive list. Not sponsored. Just the stuff that's been in my workflow long enough to trust.
Tool posts are everywhere, and most of them are aspirational nonsense. Here’s what I’m actually using on a daily basis, with honest takes on why.
Editor: Neovim (mostly)
I’ve been using Neovim for a few years. I won’t try to convince you to switch — the setup cost is real and the payoff is personal. What I will say is that after a certain point, the editor disappears and you’re just thinking about the code.
That said: I keep VS Code around for large, unfamiliar codebases where I want the full language server, git integration, and the ability to click around. Neovim for writing and editing code I know. VS Code for reading code I don’t.
Terminal: Ghostty
Switched to Ghostty recently and it’s fast in a way that’s hard to describe until you’ve used it. GPU-rendered, minimal configuration, stays out of the way.
Shell: Fish
Fish’s autosuggestions and syntax highlighting are good enough that I can’t go back to zsh without reaching for a plugin to replicate them. It’s slightly non-POSIX, which occasionally bites, but not often enough to matter.
Git: CLI + lazygit
lazygit is the one TUI I’d recommend unconditionally. It makes the git object model visible in a way that the command line doesn’t. I use it when I’m doing anything more complex than commit and push.
Notes: Obsidian
I’ve tried most of the popular options. Obsidian wins because it’s plain Markdown files in a folder on my machine. No sync vendor lock-in, no proprietary format. I can grep my notes, version-control them, open them in any editor.
The graph view is useless. The core plugin for daily notes is genuinely valuable. The templates plugin saves time.
Task management: Plain text
I’ve given up on task management apps. I have a TODO.md in every project and a personal now.md file that I update every morning. It takes five minutes to review and update. It’s never out of date because it’s always visible.
Browser: Firefox
Mostly because I don’t want all my data going through a company that also runs the largest ad network in the world. The dev tools are good enough.
The honest pattern in all of this: the tools I trust are the ones that use open formats, have small footprints, and don’t try to be clever. The fancier the tool, the more of your cognitive load it ends up requiring.
Plain files, fast rendering, obvious behavior. That’s the bar.