Uses
What I actually work with.
The tools, services, and habits behind the work on this site. Refreshed when I switch something out. Some links below are referral or affiliate links. I'm not recommending anything I don't use daily.
AI & agent stack
- Claude Code from Anthropic. Primary writing and building partner. Drives Valet.
- Anthropic API. Powers Floodplain (Haiku and Sonnet) and most of my prototypes.
- Lovable. Rapid prototyping for user research instruments. UXR studies.
- Granola. Meeting notes I can actually search.
- Cursor. When the work is more in the editor than the conversation.
Building
- Astro 6. Static-first, content-collections-driven. This site runs on it.
- Tailwind 4. CSS-variable-based design tokens.
- Cloudflare Pages, Workers, Turnstile. Hosting, edge compute, spam protection.
- Supabase. Backend for Roost.
- Vercel. Where I host things that need Next.js or richer build tooling.
- shadcn/ui. Component baseline for Roost.
- bun. Package manager and runtime.
Planning & thinking
- Notion. Knowledge base, task list, the document outboard.
- Linear. For Roost.
- Jira & Confluence. For day-job product work.
- Granola → Notion. Meeting notes routed automatically.
- Valet's annual planning protocol. The 5-phase framework that holds the year.
Communication
- Slack. Where most async work happens. Floodplain sits here.
- Gmail + Notion Mail. Inbox triage routed through Valet's pipeline.
- Notion Calendar. The single calendar UI across accounts.
Hardware
- MacBook Pro M4. Primary machine.
- Studio Display. The other half of the desk.
- Logitech MX Master. For the days the trackpad isn't enough.
Reference
- Howard Marks memos.
- Linear, Vercel, Stripe Press for design and writing reference.
- Daniel Pink, Annie Duke, Don Norman, the Bridgewater Principles book.
Note on referrals: I'll add referral links as I clean these up. They're never the reason a tool is on this list. If a tool I don't recommend pays better, it doesn't make the cut.