Published Mar 10, 2026

toolingproductivity

Essential developer tools for a more productive workflow

The right tools can make you dramatically more productive. After years of experimenting, here are the tools and workflows that have made the biggest difference in my day-to-day development.

Terminal setup

Your terminal is where you spend a huge amount of time. Make it work for you.

A modern terminal emulator. Ghostty, Warp, or iTerm2 on macOS. Windows Terminal on Windows. These offer GPU rendering, tabs, split panes, and proper Unicode support.

A better shell. Zsh with a minimal prompt like Starship. Avoid bloated Oh My Zsh configurations — instead, add only the plugins you actually use:

  • zsh-autosuggestions — suggests commands from your history as you type
  • zsh-syntax-highlighting — colors valid and invalid commands differently
  • z or zoxide — jump to frequently used directories with fuzzy matching

Essential CLI tools:

  • ripgrep (rg) — search code 10x faster than grep
  • fd — find files faster than find
  • bat — cat with syntax highlighting
  • jq — parse and query JSON from the command line
  • httpie or curlie — friendlier alternatives to curl

Git workflow

Git is more powerful than most people realize. A few tips:

Interactive rebase for cleaning up commits before pushing:

git rebase -i HEAD~3

Git aliases for common operations:

git config --global alias.co checkout
git config --global alias.br branch
git config --global alias.st status
git config --global alias.lg "log --oneline --graph --all"

Git worktrees let you work on multiple branches simultaneously without stashing:

git worktree add ../feature-branch feature-branch

Editor productivity

Regardless of your editor, these habits make a big difference:

  • Learn multi-cursor editing — it eliminates repetitive edits
  • Set up project-specific settings and formatters
  • Use a linter that runs on save
  • Learn the keyboard shortcut for "Go to Definition" and "Find All References"
  • Use snippets for boilerplate you type frequently

Browser DevTools

Chrome DevTools is an incredibly powerful debugging environment:

  • Network tab — throttle connections, inspect headers, replay requests
  • Performance tab — profile rendering bottlenecks and long tasks
  • Lighthouse — automated audits for performance, accessibility, and SEO
  • Application tab — inspect cookies, local storage, service workers

Claude Code

AI-assisted development has become an essential part of my workflow. Claude Code in the terminal helps with code generation, debugging, refactoring, and exploring unfamiliar codebases. The key is to use it as a collaborator — provide context, review suggestions critically, and iterate on the output.

The best tool is the one you actually learn deeply. Pick a few from each category, invest time in mastering them, and they will pay dividends every single day.