Tools I use

I’ve seen youtubers add such lists in their description, tools they use for content creation, camera, lens, lights, even the keyboard they use.

I thought it would be fun to write mine and get to know what you use. I’m a Software Engineer by profession, most of the tools I use can be used in any sort of knowledge work.

Productivity & Note taking

1. Obsidian - For notes or jotting anything under the sun. This is where everything ends up. I’m using it since 2020. I have tried other note taking tools logseq, notion, joplin, simplenote and friends - paid, free and opensource but couldn’t use them as simply I use obsidian.

   It has most of what I’ve learned in life since using it. All the books, journal entries, thoughts, drafts etc. Fun part is now you can run a coding agent on these notes and let it write the notes for you as notes are plain markdown.

2. Raindrop.io - For bookmarks, web page archiving and research papers. I read a lot, I’m a frequent HN, lobste.rs lurker and I come across at least 3 blogs a day that are interesting enough to read.

   Raindrop gives me peace of mind that I don’t have to keep tabs open, everything that I’ve to read is at one place. I read the blogs’ permanent copy in raindrop and all highlights are automatically written to obsidian.

   They recently added PDF support, so you can read papers on it and annotate them.

   Before this I used to send blogs to kindle via kindle-send , now I don’t as it was flooding my kindle catalog. I still use kindle-send to send books to kindle but not blogs.

3. Google Keep - For braindumping. Any screenshot, quick idea, thoughts go into Keep as it is always available on every device I use. Later on I move things to obsidian or archive them.

   If you want something private, try Quillpad

4. Brain.fm - Focus and relaxing music. It works for me, so I got a yearly subscription. Some of their tracks are crazy good. I listen to them on repeat while working or reading.

   There unwind tracks are good too, I listen to when I come back from work and do some chores. If I’m not listening to Pakistani Pop Music.

5. Todoist - For tasks. But I barely use it now as I end up writing things on Post-it notes the night before or in the morning and doing them. Todoist or any task tracking app is still good for keeping lists. But I realised I don’t use it that much.

   I’ll cancel my subscription and move my list to Google Tasks, once the current sub ends.

6. O’reilly - Subscription for all the tech books, courses by oreilly and some other publishers in the domain like Manning, Packt, No starch. It is convenient and they have live sessions now and then.

   It was free at Flipkart, I bought mine when I left Flipkart for Uber, it is that good. Best subscription I have

AI & Development Tools

6. Perplexity - There is an AI mode in Google but once you use perplexity for complex queries there is no going back. Some of the use cases – compare products, reviews across websites, ask questions when I get stuck following a DIY blog posts.

   I tried their browser Comet but it is too slow to use at the moment for agentic tasks. It’s good for bookings and filling forms. Not a daily driver just yet.

7. LM studio - Mostly with gpt-oss 20B or to play around with smaller fine tuned models. At the moment I don’t use it for anything concrete, some POCs.

8. Notebook LM - I use it as Youtube summarizer. Ask questions about codebase and mindmaps on some long blog posts. Again any notes here go to obsidian. Sometimes when I’ve less time I listen to audio overview in gym or commute.

9. Zed - Editor of choice for personal projects. At work I use cursor.

10. Cursor Agent - Choice of coding agent for personal tasks. I can’t pay for claude code for personal projects and cursor-agent is a sweet spot between pricing and capabilities. Things like updating this site, my notes, HTML and shell work.

    As most of my writings are in markdown, I use it to move around and organise content blocks too.

11. Claude Code - Choice of coding agent at work. I don’t use cursor as an AI editor anymore, it is just there to review claude code’s changes. Claude code is so convenient and good. I use it heavily at work, have built systems around it to get better results.

    Few things I’ve found helpful is write revive.md files, which IMO are better than /compact that claude code does. I always divide the work and use atleast two more instances as subagents. When doing a lot of planning and research, I spawn one claude instance as reviewer.

    I feel that this convenience has a cost in form of how fast and deeply I’m learning. I’m figuring this part out.

Hardware & Devices

12. Macbook Air - I don’t want to charge my laptop or work on it while it is plugged in. I wanted a powerful machine which just works and is easy to carry. Having tinkered with linux for 6+ years doing all sort of stuff, I feel better using a macbook. I use an M4 with 24GB ram.

    One more reason to get it was Logic Pro

13. Kindle - Bought it in 2021, still going strong in 2025. Device I can’t do without. I can go back to dumb phones and pay via cash, but can’t let go of kindle.

14. Canon R50 - I was reading Learning to see creatively and didn’t understand bits about focal length and aperture. Wanted to learn photography and how an actual camera works. So bought this. Got some lenses along the line, have learnt a lot about general photography after buying it.

Writing & Utilities

15. MarkText - To write blogs, posts etc. It has a minimal UI. I set Literata as default font and enjoy writing on it. Ideas just flow, it is like writing using pen and paper.

16. Blip - To share files across devices. It’s like airdrop

17. Unhook Web Extension - I used to spend 15 minutes to 2 hours on youtube when I’m supposed to spend only 10 minutes. This extension removes recommended videos, shorts and home feed. Saves a lot of serious time.

18. Minimalist launcher - One day I opened digital wellbeing and realised I spend more than 1 hour on phone apart from calls. Installed this, I block Whatsapp and other apps for some time using this. Good launcher. Has a one time fees, I use it on every android device I have.