I like to periodically take stock of the tools that have become essential to my workflow. Here’s what’s making the cut in 2026.

Editor

Still VS Code. The extension ecosystem is unmatched, and Copilot has become genuinely useful for boilerplate and exploration.

Terminal

Windows Terminal + PowerShell 7. Clean, fast, and finally feels native on Windows.

Note-taking

Obsidian for anything that needs to stick around. Plain markdown files that I own and can search.

Version control

Git, obviously. But I’ve been leaning more on the CLI lately—fewer clicks, more intention.

What I’ve dropped

Switched away from a few things this year:

  • Dropped Notion for personal notes (too heavy)
  • Stopped using Postman in favor of just curl and .http files

Less tooling, more focus.