// The Tools I Use

I resist turning my setup into a personality, but I also find these posts genuinely useful when other people write them. So here’s mine, with the caveat that it will probably look different in six months.

Editor. VS Code. I’ve tried Neovim twice and enjoyed it both times without ever fully committing. The configuration overhead eventually wins and I come back. VS Code with Vim keybindings gets me 90% of the way there without the maintenance. I keep the UI stripped down — no file tree open by default, status bar hidden, minimal extensions.

Terminal. Ghostty, which I switched to earlier this year and haven’t looked back from. Fast, minimal, native. I use zsh with a short custom prompt that shows the current directory and git branch and nothing else.

Browser. Arc for daily use, Firefox for testing. Arc’s split view and Spaces have genuinely changed how I work — I keep a separate space for each active project, which stops the tab sprawl that used to slow me down.

Notes. Plain markdown files in a folder, synced with iCloud. I’ve tried Notion, Obsidian, Bear, and Roam at various points. They’re all fine. None of them were worth the switching cost. A folder of text files opens instantly, works offline, and will outlast every note-taking app.

Hardware. M3 MacBook Air. Silent, fast enough for everything I do, lasts all day on a charge. I have a Studio Display on my desk at home that I almost never use because working from the laptop screen has become a habit.