My Developer Toolbox in 2026
The editors, terminals, CLI apps and services I reach for every day — what made the cut, what got replaced, and what I'd recommend to anyone.
3 min read
Developers love talking about their setups, and I’m no exception. Here’s an honest tour of the tools I use daily in 2026 — not an affiliate-link shopping list, just what survived contact with real work.
The daily drivers
Editor: VS Code (with Neovim keybindings)
I’ve done the pure-Neovim era, the Emacs curiosity phase, and the “maybe I should try Zed” weekend. I keep coming back to VS Code with the Vim extension: 90% of Vim’s speed with 0% of the config maintenance.
Non-negotiable extensions: Vim emulation, ESLint, Prettier, GitLens, and an error-lens style inline diagnostics plugin. Everything else is negotiable.
Terminal: whatever’s fast + tmux
The terminal emulator matters less than people think — I use the platform default with a Nerd Font. What matters is tmux: persistent sessions, split panes, and the ability to detach from a long-running job and walk away.
My entire tmux config is maybe 15 lines. The best tool config is the one you can recreate from memory.
Shell: zsh + a short prompt
Oh My Zsh was slowing my shell startup to nearly a second, so I stripped it back to the essentials: syntax highlighting, autosuggestions, and git aliases I actually type. Prompt shows: directory, git branch, dirty state. Nothing else. Fast shells make you feel fast.
CLI apps worth installing
These small tools earn their place every single day:
| Tool | Replaces | Why it’s better |
|---|---|---|
ripgrep (rg) |
grep |
Respects .gitignore, stupidly fast |
fd |
find |
Sane syntax, colorized output |
bat |
cat |
Syntax highlighting + line numbers + paging |
eza |
ls |
Git status baked into listings |
fzf |
Ctrl+R |
Fuzzy-find anything: files, history, processes |
zoxide |
cd |
Learns your directories, z blog just works |
jq |
eyeballs | Query JSON like it’s a database |
If you install just one: make it fzf. Pipe anything into it and your terminal becomes searchable.
The supporting cast
- Git + GitHub — obvious, but the skill isn’t knowing git, it’s writing good commit messages and small PRs.
- Docker — for “works on my machine” insurance. If a project has more than two dependencies, it gets a container.
- Python — my automation duct tape. Half the scripts on this blog started as “I’ll just quickly…” (see: 5 Python scripts I actually use).
- Obsidian — notes in plain Markdown files I own. No lock-in, works offline, syncs over git.
- Bitwarden — a password manager isn’t optional anymore. Unique 20-character passwords everywhere, one master password in my head.
What I deliberately don’t use
- A second monitor’s worth of dashboards. If a metric doesn’t change what I do today, I don’t need to see it today.
- AI autocomplete I can’t audit. I use AI assistants for boilerplate and explanations — but every line gets read before it gets committed. Trust, but verify, then verify again.
- Eleven note-taking apps. One notes folder. One todo list. Boring and effective.
The meta-lesson
Tools don’t make you productive — removing friction makes you productive. Every tool on this list survived because it removed more friction than it added.
My advice for building your own toolbox:
- Start boring. Defaults are fine until they hurt. Only optimize real pain.
- Learn one tool deeply before collecting ten shallowly. A black belt in your editor beats white belts in five.
- Revisit yearly. I do this audit every July. Tools (and needs) change — your setup should too.
- Back up your dotfiles. Future-you, setting up a new machine at midnight before a deadline, says thanks.
What’s in your toolbox? If there’s something life-changing I’m missing, I’d genuinely love to hear about it — find me on GitHub.