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setup

6 min read

This document outlines the hardware, software, and workflows I use daily.

Devices

  • Main Machine: Mac Mini (2020)
    • Processor: Apple M1
    • Memory: 16 GB RAM
    • Storage: 512 GB SSD
  • Laptop: MacBook Air (2015)
    • Processor: 1.6GHz Intel Core i5
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Storage: 128 GB SSD
  • Old Windows PC:
    • OS: Windows 10 Pro (10.0.19045)
    • System: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
    • Processor: Intel64 Family 6 Model 94 Stepping 3 (~2.8 GHz)
    • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Storage:
      • 250 GB Samsung SSD 860 EVO
      • 500 GB WDC HDD
  • Phone: iPhone 13 Mini

Peripherals

  • Mouse: Razer DeathAdder Essential

Software

Core Tools

  • Browser: Brave Browser (main), Safari (secondary), Dia (tertiary, with cool LLM integration and memory features)
  • IDE: Zed (main), Visual Studio Code (secondary)
  • Org Mode in Zed: I use the Org extension for Zed to manage my notes and tasks in Org Mode.
  • Terminal: Hyper (main, with hyper-rename-tab plugin), iTerm2 with Zsh (secondary), Warp (tertiary), Ghostty (quaternary)
    • Font: I use Nerd Fonts to get glyphs and icons in my terminal.
    • Preferred Fonts: JetBrains Mono, Google Sans Code
    • Ghostty Config
  • Launcher: Cling (main), Raycast (secondary). My AI shortcut is always remapped to Cmd+E.
  • Window Manager: AeroSpace for tiling window management.

Note-taking & Writing

  • Primary: Obsidian and Craft for structured notes and writing.
  • Secondary: Bear, Notion, and Drafts for quick capture and ideation.

AI & Productivity

  • AI Assistants: I frequently use GPT-4, Gemini 1.5, and Claude 3 for various tasks.
  • WisprFlow: https://wisprflow.ai/ - An AI-powered voice dictation platform designed to convert speech into text across various applications, enabling users to write, edit, and control documents significantly faster than traditional typing. It leverages advanced AI to understand natural speech, execute context-aware commands, and perform real-time auto-edits, providing a seamless and personalized writing experience.
  • AI Search: Perplexity AI for research.

Content Creation

  • Video Editing: Adobe Premiere Pro, Descript, OBS Studio
  • Design: Penpot, Framer

Accessibility & Voice Control

  • Talon Voice: https://talonvoice.com/ - A voice-based accessibility software that allows users to control their computer using their voice, eye tracking, or other noises. It is particularly useful for individuals with physical disabilities or those who want to reduce repetitive strain from using traditional input methods like a keyboard or mouse. It enables hands-free input, is highly customizable through Python scripts, runs locally, and supports multiple platforms.

Development & Automation

  • Containerization: Docker
  • Automation: n8n for workflow automation.
  • Scripting: I rely on a personal collection of shell and Python scripts to automate repetitive tasks.
  • Hosting: Netlify and Vercel for deploying web projects.
  • AI Development: Dria for knowledge-centric AI.

Utilities

  • Firewall: LuLu for monitoring network connections.
  • File Transfer: Folx for managing downloads.
  • Torrents: Flux for torrent management.
  • Music Decoy: Plays fake music when your boss is nearby.
  • MagicQuit MagicQuit is a Mac app that automatically closes (quits) applications when you havenā€™t used them for a specified period of time. It helps keep your macOS desktop cleaner, frees up memory, and enhances battery life by quitting idle apps without any manual intervention.

Workflow & Philosophy

Cross-Device Sync

To maintain a consistent environment across my Macs, I use symbolic links. Key configuration files for my tools (like my AI assistantā€™s memory) are stored in iCloud Drive. I then link to them from their expected local directories on each machine. This ensures my settings are always in sync, no matter where I am working.

Personal Operating System

My productivity system is built on a set of plain text markdown files managed in my iCloud Drive. I maintain:

  • A long-term file for yearly goals and todos.
  • A daily journal for capturing tasks, logs, and ideas.
  • A comprehensive, categorized list of all the software and tools I use or find interesting.

This text-based ā€˜personal OSā€™ is simple, portable, and powerful, allowing me to manage my life from any text editor.

Obsidian Plugins

  • Natural Language Dates: Install this plugin for easy date insertion.
    • Date Format: dddd, MMMM D, YYYY
  • Theme: When I use Obsidian, I prefer the Azure theme.

Kitty Terminal

Theme

My terminal theme is based on the ā€œBorlandā€ theme. Here is the configuration from current-theme.conf:

background            #0000a3
foreground            #ffff4d
cursor                #ffa460
selection_background  #a3a3a3
color0                #4e4e4e
color8                #7c7c7c
color1                #ff6b60
color9                #ffb6b0
color2                #a7ff60
color10               #ceffab
color3                #ffffb6
color11               #ffffcb
color4                #96cafd
color12               #b5dcfe
color5                #ff73fd
color13               #ff9cfe
color6                #c6c4fd
color14               #dfdffe
color7                #eeeeee
color15               #ffffff
selection_foreground #0000a3
tab_bar_edge top

Configuration

To make the title bar integrate with the terminal window, I use the following setting in kitty.conf:

hide_window_decorations titlebar-only

CLI Tools

Here are all the CLI tools mentioned in the video ā€œ10 CLI apps that have actually improved the way I work in the terminalā€:

  1. Zoxide

    A smarter, faster replacement for the cd command, using fuzzy matching to jump between directories efficiently.

  2. rg (Ripgrep)

    A modern, fast alternative to grep for searching text patterns in files, with sane defaults and recursive search.

  3. fd

    A user-friendly replacement for the find command, making file searches faster and more intuitive, with glob and regex support.

  4. tmux

    A terminal multiplexer that lets you manage multiple terminal sessions, panes, and windows, with session persistence and automation features.

  5. gh (GitHub CLI)

    Interact with GitHub directly from the terminalā€”create repos, check issues, and automate pull requests without opening a browser.

  6. doppler

    A CLI for secrets management, allowing you to inject environment variables securely for different environments (dev, prod, personal).

  7. pass (Password Store)

    A Unix password manager using GPG and Git, ideal for managing API tokens, database URLs, and passwords securely from the terminal.

  8. jq

    A powerful tool for parsing, filtering, and transforming JSON data in the terminal, essential for backend and fullstack developers.

  9. stow

    Manages dotfiles by creating symbolic links, making it easy to version control and share configurations across machines.

  10. fzf (Fuzzy Finder)

    A fuzzy finding tool for the command line, great for interactive search and tab completion, and for building CLI apps with interactive selection. https://suckless.org/ - Suckless.org is a community that creates minimalist, high-quality software, focusing on simplicity, clarity, and frugality. https://github.com/normen/whatscli - A command-line interface (CLI) for WhatsApp, allowing users to send/receive messages, manage groups, and handle attachments from the terminal. https://github.com/tw93/Mole - A terminal-based tool designed to clean and optimize macOS systems, offering deep system cleanup, thorough application uninstallation, and an interactive disk analyzer.

Nice to Have

I have an old laptop with Debian 11 installed, that is a Compaqnx9420 laptop

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