Uses
A living list of the software, AI tooling, and workflows I rely on for product management, software engineering, and writing. Inspired by uses.tech.
Last updated: September 2026.
Development & AI Tooling
- AI-Native Editor & IDE: Cursor is my daily driver for both software development and navigating Markdown knowledge bases. The ability to ground AI context across local files makes it indispensable (see my essay How Cursor Can Win). I also keep VS Code installed for quick edits.
- AI Coding Agents & CLI: Claude Code, OpenAI Codex CLI, and Gemini CLI for terminal-driven refactoring, exploration, and testing workflows.
- AI Skill & Prompt Management: EnhancedSkills — a native macOS application I built to audit, validate, and manage custom agent skills and prompt definitions across Claude Code and Codex environments with one-click fixes.
- Quota & Multi-Account Monitoring: Codex Accounts — a macOS menu bar app I created to monitor real-time token quotas and API usage across multiple OpenAI accounts.
- Media Ingestion & Processing: MacYT — a native SwiftUI application wrapping
yt-dlpwith automatic format selection, subtitle extraction, and SponsorBlock integration for downloading reference talks and interviews. - Terminal & Shell: Ghostty and iTerm2 with
zsh. - Package & Environment Management: uv for fast Python package management and virtual environments;
rbenvfor Ruby version pinning;nvmfor Node.js runtimes. - Version Control: Git via CLI with GitHub for remote repositories and CI/CD actions.
Knowledge Management, Reading & Writing
- Reading & Highlight Ingestion: Kindle for distraction-free reading. Highlights and notes are organized using KindleWise — a tool I built that extracts highlights into structured formats with AI-driven Q&A and visual analytics.
- Web Clipping & Knowledge Vault: Notion Web Clipper — a Chrome extension I built to save clean full-text webpage articles and metadata directly into Notion databases.
- Note-Taking & Thinking: Markdown-first personal knowledge vault. I structure notes around atomic ideas inspired by Sönke Ahrens’ How to Take Smart Notes and write by hand before digitizing, as outlined in PSA: Don’t Outsource Your Writing to AI.
- Reading Queue: Readwise Reader for triaging RSS feeds, web articles, and research.
- Task & Habit Architecture: TickTick for day-to-day task scheduling, habit tracking, and project checklists.
Health & Productivity Tools
- Sleep & Recovery: Oura Ring for sleep and readiness metrics, integrated via custom automation tooling via ClawdBot Skills.
- Smart Nursery Analytics: Cradlewise Sleep Lab — a custom analytics dashboard built to analyze infant sleep patterns and sleep efficiency trends.
- Browser Automation & Life Ops:
- Amazon Subscription Canceler — a Chrome extension that automates bulk cancellation of Subscribe & Save items.
- Twitter List Quick Add — a browser extension to organize Twitter lists directly from the timeline without context switching.
- Lenny’s Time Capsule — a web project matching product management dilemmas with wisdom from Lenny’s Podcast guests.
Publishing & Web Stack
- Static Site Engine: Jekyll hosted on GitHub Pages.
- Web Application Stack: Next.js, React, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS for interactive tools and client-side web apps.
- Native macOS Development: Swift, SwiftUI, and AppKit for building responsive desktop utilities.
- Document & PDF Processing: Custom CLI utilities including PDF OCR Tool for making scans searchable, PDF Table of Contents Generator, and PDF Combiner.