Uses
What I use
The stack behind everything here. I keep it deliberately small — boring, durable tools beat shiny ones when you're shipping solo.
How this site is built
- Hand-written HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No framework, no build step. The site is plain files you can read top to bottom.
- GitHub Pages for hosting, on a custom domain. Static, fast, and cheap to keep alive.
- A strict self-only content-security policy. No third-party scripts, no trackers, no ads — by design.
- Formspree handles the contact form so there's no backend to run.
- Ko-fi is the whole monetization model: tools are free, tips are optional.
Building the tools
- Git and GitHub for version control and shipping everything in the open.
- Vanilla JS for the brochure site; a small Vite template for the app-style tools that need a bundler.
- The File System Access API is the backbone of the local-first tools — it's how Wren and Pinion.md read and write files on your own disk instead of mine.
- Progressive web app patterns (service workers, manifests) so tools install and work offline.
AI in the loop
- Claude is my daily driver for thinking through builds, writing, and untangling problems.
- Claude Code and Cowork do the hands-on work — editing repos, shipping changes, running the pipelines behind these tools.
- The same practical-AI workflows I post about on X are the ones I actually use to get this done.
Tools I built and actually use
I dogfood my own work. Pinion.md for Markdown, Wren for notes, and UniStyle whenever I need formatted text somewhere plain text is all that's allowed. If I wouldn't use it myself, I don't ship it.
This page covers the build stack. Curious about hardware or my editor setup? Ask me and I'll add it.