A living document of the tools I use daily. Inspired by uses.tech and the glorious tradition of nerds sharing their setups.

Last updated: January 2026

💻 Hardware

Primary Machine: Arch Linux

  • Custom Build: i7 processor, 64GB RAM: The daily driver for everything
  • OS: Arch Linux: I love Linux and constantly deep-dive into tweaking. BTW I use Arch.
  • Window Manager: Keyboard-driven workflow. Mouse is optional, shortcuts are mandatory.
  • Microphone: HyperX QuadCast: Crystal clear audio for calls and content
  • NixOS: Sometimes venture into the Nix ecosystem for reproducible builds and declarative configs

Secondary Machine: MacBook Pro

  • MacBook Pro (M-series, maxed out RAM & storage): The ML/AI workhorse. When I need GPU acceleration and don’t want to fight CUDA drivers.
  • External Monitor: 27" 4K: Because code needs room to breathe

Peripherals

  • Keyboard: Mechanical (Cherry MX Browns): Tactile without being obnoxious in meetings
  • Mouse: Apple Magic Mouse + Logitech MX Master 3: Magic Mouse for gestures, MX3 for precision work
  • Headphones: Sony WH-1000XM5: For when the world needs to go away

Mobile

  • Phone: iPhone: The camera is the only reason
  • Tablet: iPad + Apple Pencil: For reading papers and pretending to take notes

🎬 Video & Content Creation

Camera

  • Sony A7IV: Full-frame beast. The autofocus is scary good, and 4K 60fps handles everything I throw at it. Perfect for building-in-public content and detailed videos.
  • Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM: The king of wide-angle primes. Buttery bokeh, razor sharp, and that f/1.4 means I can shoot in my dimly lit office without looking like a potato.

Audio

  • Rode Wireless Go: Compact wireless mic system. Clean audio without cable management nightmares.

Lighting

  • LED Lights (x2): One for key light, second for fill and rim. Proper lighting makes more difference than any camera upgrade.

Accessories

  • Neewer Dummy Battery: Essential for long recording sessions. No more battery swaps mid-take.

Why This Combo

The 24mm on full-frame is the vlogging/talking head focal length. Wide enough to get context, tight enough to feel personal. The GM glass paired with the A7IV’s IBIS means I can shoot handheld without looking like I’m on a boat.

Platforms

  • YouTube: Long-form content on AI, philosophy, engineering, fitness
  • X (@shuvro): Daily building-in-public updates
  • Instagram: Visual journey of the build
  • TikTok: Short-form insights and chaos

🖥️ Development Environment

Editor & IDE

  • Neovim: btw. Configured to the point of no return. My init.lua is longer than some of my projects.
    • Plugin manager: lazy.nvim
    • Theme: Tokyo Night / Catppuccin (mood-dependent)
    • LSP: Native with nvim-lspconfig
    • Completion: nvim-cmp
    • File navigation: telescope.nvim + harpoon

Terminal

  • Wezterm: GPU-accelerated, configurable in Lua, and the ligatures are chef’s kiss
  • tmux: Session management. The prefix is Ctrl-a because I have taste.
  • Shell: Zsh + Oh My Zsh + Powerlevel10k: Fast and pretty

Version Control

  • Git: Obviously
  • lazygit: TUI for git that makes rebasing less terrifying
  • gh: GitHub CLI for when I’m too lazy to open a browser

🧠 AI/ML Stack

Python Environment

  • pyenv + pyenv-virtualenv: Python version sanity
  • Poetry: Dependency management that doesn’t make me cry

LLM Providers

  • OpenAI GPT-4: The workhorse for complex reasoning tasks
  • Anthropic Claude: When I need longer context and nuanced responses
  • Google Gemini: Multimodal capabilities and cost efficiency
  • HuggingFace: Open source models and custom fine-tuning

LLM Orchestration & Agents

  • LangChain: Building complex RAG flows and retrieval pipelines
  • LangGraph: State machine-based agent workflows that don’t go off the rails
  • LlamaIndex: Data connectors and structured retrieval
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP): Safe external tool integration for AI agents
  • Pydantic: Type-safe output validation for LLM responses

Vector Databases & Search

  • PGVector: Vector storage that lives with my PostgreSQL data. No separate infra.

Observability

  • LangSmith: Full trace of agent decisions, tool calls, and reasoning

ML Frameworks

  • PyTorch: The one true framework (fight me)
  • HuggingFace Transformers: Standing on the shoulders of giants
  • spaCy: Industrial-strength NLP when transformers are overkill

Notebooks

  • JupyterLab: For exploration
  • Marimo: The future of notebooks (reactive, git-friendly)

📝 Writing & Notes

Knowledge Management

  • Obsidian: My second brain. Multiple vaults for different contexts: personal, work, research, and writing. Markdown files, graph view, and plugins I’ll configure “later”
    • Daily notes for journaling
    • Zettelkasten-ish linking
    • Canvas for visual thinking
    • Separate vaults keep contexts clean and focused

Writing

  • iA Writer: When I need to focus and just write
  • Grammarly: Because I can’t spell

🌐 Browsers & Apps

Browsers

  • Chrome: Primary. Fast, reliable, and the DevTools are unbeatable
  • Safari: For battery life and Apple ecosystem integration

Productivity

  • Raycast: Spotlight replacement. Snippets, clipboard history, window management, the works
  • Rectangle: Window snapping (before Raycast took over)
  • 1Password: Password management
  • CleanShot X: Screenshots and screen recording

Communication

  • Slack: Work chaos
  • Discord: Community chaos
  • Telegram: Personal chaos

📚 Reading & Learning

Books

  • Kindle: E-ink for focused reading
  • Libby: Library books on devices
  • Physical books: For anything I want to annotate heavily

Papers & Research

  • Zotero: Reference management
  • Semantic Scholar: Finding papers
  • ar5iv: When arXiv PDFs hurt my eyes

Podcasts

  • Overcast: Smart speed is non-negotiable

💪 Fitness

  • Started: January 2025, my New Year resolution to get fit and stay healthy lifelong
  • Training Split: Push/Pull/Legs, 6 days a week
  • Tracking: Strong app: simple, effective, no BS
  • Watch: Apple Watch: for heart rate and rest timers
  • Philosophy: Natural bodybuilding. No shortcuts, just consistency and progressive overload.
  • Protein: Too much chicken. Send help.

🚀 Building in Public

Current Projects

The Philosophy

Ship daily. Share progress. Learn in public. The messy middle is where the interesting stuff happens.

🎮 For Fun

  • Spotify: Music for lifting (and coding)
  • Steam: Gaming backlog I’ll never finish
  • YouTube: Renaissance Periodization, Jeff Nippard, hubermanlab

🐾 Cat Integration (Euro & Brownie)

Euro and Brownie joined our family in 2023 and have been essential members of the home office ever since.

  • Automatic feeder: So I can code without interruption (they disagree)
  • Heated cat bed x2: Near my desk so they can supervise in comfort
  • Cat tree: Euro’s throne for dignified observation
  • Laser pointer: For debugging breaks (Brownie’s favorite)
  • Keyboard cover: A futile attempt to stop Brownie from “helping” me code

🔧 This Site

  • Hugo: Static site generator
  • PaperMod: Theme (heavily customized)
  • Cloudflare Pages: Hosting
  • Neovim: Writing posts in Markdown
  • Custom CSS: Because I have opinions about typography

Things I’ve Tried and Abandoned

A graveyard of productivity tools past:

  • VS Code → Neovim (no going back)
  • Evernote → Notion → Obsidian (finally home)
  • Todoist → Notion → Obsidian (vaults for everything now)
  • Arc → Chrome (back to basics)
  • Oh My Zsh → Fish → Back to Zsh (muscle memory is real)

This page will evolve. Tools change. Opinions strengthen. The cat remains unimpressed.

See also: About Me | What I’m Doing Now | What I Believe