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Development Stack

All of the apps, tools, and services I use to build my projects.Note: I may earn a commission from some links (thank you for supporting me).

Apps

Cursor - Cursor is a fork of VSCode with Claude built-in. I find the AI is a lot better than GitHub Copilot. They keep it up to date with the latest versions of VSCode so any extension should work perfectly.

Warp - My main terminal app. I switched from iTerm2 and like it a lot better. It has AI built-in which is great in case I forget a command. The autocompletion is also really good.

Arc - My browser of choice. I love the sidebar design and having different spaces. It's built on top of Chromium so any Chrome extension is compatible.

Raycast - So much more than a spotlight replacement. Raycast integrates with a ton of tools and lets you take control of your entire mac from your keyboard. Things like changing output devices and clipboard history are super convenient.

Linear - Primarily a team-based project management tool but it's still great for personal projects.

Languages/Frameworks

Next.js - I use Next as the frontend for all of my projects. Its server-side capabilites make it great for SEO and with small apps a separate backend may not be necessary.

NestJS - I've not yet built a backend with Nest but it's what I'll use. I love ExpressJS and it's a more opinonated verison of it. It has some similarites to Rails (which I use at work) which I like.

TailwindCSS - A utility-first CSS framework. It's easy to pick up and makes building UIs super fast.

HeadlessUI - UI Components built with Tailwind. Really useful for dropdown menus.

shadcn/ui - When I need a UI component I don't want to build myself I go here first. Lots of great ones that are easy to integrate with.

Services

Vercel - Where I host all of my frontend projects. By far the easiest way to host Next.js and take advantage of Vercel's features (like edge functions and storage).

Railway - Where I'll be hosting my backend APIs. I've heard it called "The Vercel for Backend".

Supabase - The PostgreSQL database I use for all of my projects. It's easy to build with and they handle auth with minimal setup.

Amazon S3 - Where I store all media files very cheaply.

Resend - How I send emails within my apps. Setting it up takes minutes and their Next.js SDK is great to work with.

React Email - A collection of React components to design emails. It's maintained by Resend so it integreates nicely.

ConvertKit - The platform I use to send my weekly newsletter. I'm using their API to have custom signup forms on my website.

Loops - I've only played with loops for a few minutes but it's what I'll use when I launch a SaaS. They handle both marketing and transactional emails and have a really nice SDK.

Dub.co - What I use to create shorten and track my links (caccamise.link). They also have a powerful API/SDK that is great if you need to implement link sharing in your app.

Plausible - Privacy-focused analytics that are still super powerful.

Cloudflare - I use their free plan to protect against DDoS attacks and manage my DNS settings.

Lemon Squeezy - Where I currently sell my digital products. They handle global tax compliance which saves me a lot of headaches.

Paddle - A similar platform to Lemon Squeezy that I'm using to sell website templates at Visibly.co. It's also what I'll use for handling billing for my SaaS projects.

Domains

Porkbun - Where I buy almost all of my domains.

Namecheap - Any TLDs that aren't available on Porkbun (like .so) I usually look here.

One Word Domains - A database of available short domains under lots of TLDs. It's where I found visibly.co.

Resources

Visibly.co - My upcoming design business. Next.js/TailwindCSS landing page templates for SaaS.

Refactoring UI - A great eBook about UI design written by the creators of TailwindCSS that I think is worth a read. It's super actionable and taught me a lot of best practices.

Full Stack Web Development Udemy Course - When I got serious about learning this is the course I went through. I've only done the front-end portion but the instructure, Colte, is great at explaining things. Highly recommend this course for beginners.

React/Next.js Udemy Course - Jonas is my favorite instructor, and his React course is phenomenal. He covers all of vanilla React and a few sections on Next.js that were super helpful when I got started with next.

Traversy Media - My favorite programming YouTube channel. Brad's a great guy and his crash courses are the first place I go whenever I learn a new technology.

What's your tech stack?