The Developer Productivity Stack I Actually Use Every Day
Not a 47-tool listicle — the eight tools that survived a year of trial-and-error and now run my workday end-to-end.
Productivity posts usually list 40 tools. You'll add three to your bookmarks, use them once, and forget them. This isn't that post.
These are the eight tools I actually open every working day. Anything I tried and dropped doesn't make the list.
The whole workday in one diagram
Morning Afternoon Evening
─────── ────────── ───────
Linear → VS Code → Claude Code → Vercel → Linear
(plan) (write) (pair) (ship) (close)
↑ ↓
Raycast ←── Notion / iA Writer
(jump) (capture)
Eight tools. Same shape every day. The point is the consistency, not the tools.
1. Linear — the source of truth
Issue tracker, planning doc, and shipping log in one. The keyboard-first UX is what locked me in. If a task isn't in Linear, it doesn't exist.
The trick: one project per side-project, plus one "Personal" project for everything not work. No Notion docs, no scratch files. One inbox.
2. VS Code with three extensions
I uninstalled 22 extensions last year. The three that survived:
- GitLens — git blame inline, hover history.
- Error Lens — pushes errors into the line, not a panel.
- TODO Highlight — keeps TODO/FIXME/HACK visible so they don't rot.
That's it. Themes, icon packs, snippet libraries — all noise. Less surface area, fewer surprises.
3. Claude Code — the AI pair
By far the biggest workflow change in 2026. Claude Code lives in my terminal and reads the repo. I use it for:
- Refactors I know I want. "Extract the upload size limit into a constant in three files." Saves 90 seconds, every time.
- Reading unfamiliar code. "Walk me through how auth callbacks flow through this file." Faster than grep.
- Writing tests for code I just wrote. It catches the edge cases I miss.
What I don't use it for: anything where I don't already know what right looks like. AI is great at execution, terrible at strategy. The taste is still mine.
4. Raycast — the launcher
Spotlight replacement. Five reasons it earned a daily slot:
- Window management with a keystroke (⌥⌘←/→).
- Clipboard history (game-changer for code snippets).
- Quick-link snippets —
;emailtypes my email everywhere. - Floating notes for "thinking out loud" without committing to a doc.
- Calculator that handles unit conversion and currency.
It's $8/month for the Pro tier. I'd pay $50.
5. Notion — long-form thinking only
I've stopped using Notion as a database, a task list, or a wiki. It's pure long-form scratch space now. One workspace, no nesting deeper than two levels. If I find myself building elaborate page hierarchies, I'm avoiding the actual work.
6. iA Writer — for things that ship
When a piece of writing is going to leave my computer (a blog post, a doc, a long Slack message), I move it to iA Writer. The constraints — no fonts, no colors, no comments — make me focus on the words. Markdown in, markdown out, no surprises.
7. Vercel — the deploy button
git push triggers a preview deploy. Merge to main triggers production. I don't think about CI/CD until something breaks. The rest of my brain is freed for the actual work.
8. Cron — calendar that respects my keyboard
I switched off Google Calendar's web UI in 2025 and never looked back. Cron's keyboard shortcuts let me triage a week of meetings in 60 seconds. Time-blocking actually sticks because the friction to schedule is gone.
What I tried and dropped
| Tool | Why I dropped it |
|---|---|
| Obsidian | Plugin sprawl; couldn't stop tinkering |
| GitHub Copilot | Replaced by Claude Code (better at multi-file tasks) |
| Slack on desktop | Notifications killed flow; web-only now |
| Todoist | Linear absorbed the role |
| Trello | Same |
| 4 different terminal apps | Default Terminal.app is fine |
The lesson: tool-hopping is procrastination disguised as productivity. The setup compounds when you stop changing it.
The meta-rule
If a tool requires me to maintain it more than once a quarter, it's not a tool — it's a hobby. Real tools fade into the background.
