Tools
Honest reviews of software we actually ran. We name what we uninstalled and the free thing that beat it.
Grok Bot: the desktop agent that writes your article, the...
We pointed Grok Bot at this repo and asked it to write an article about itself. It found the back...
tokei: the code counter that files your prose under Comme...
I pointed tokei at a docs-heavy repo and it reported zero lines of code and 30,954 comments. It w...
age: the encryption tool that won't pretend to know who s...
I threat-modeled the friendly little encryption tool everyone recommends. The good news: age does...
htmlq: jq for HTML that returns nothing and swears it worked
I fed htmlq the HTML nobody sane would keep. It parsed the mess like a browser and then, on the o...
pass: the password manager that encrypts the secret and l...
The unix password manager I actually trust — GPG under the hood, a directory of files, no cloud. ...
miller (mlr): the CSV multitool that streams your good ro...
I fed miller the CSV nobody sane would keep. It printed my clean rows, then exited 1 on row three...
age: the honest review
A single Go binary that does authenticated public-key file encryption with no keyring and almost ...
just: the make replacement that runs every recipe line in...
I tried to break just the way I break everything: with the input nobody sane would type. The thir...
tealdeer: the honest review
The tldr client that hands you five crowdsourced commands instead of the man page. Fast, offline ...
Redocly CLI: the honest review
I fed Redocly a valid spec, a truncated spec, a 10,000-endpoint spec, and a filename with a SQL i...
yamllint: the honest review
The linter that catches the YAML your parser silently accepts — bare truthy coercion, duplicate k...
shellcheck: the honest review
I fed shellcheck the scripts nobody should write. It caught the quoting sins cold and slept strai...
Open-source AI IDEs: the honest review
They're not IDEs. They're open-source middlemen that still mail your repo to a model. I checked t...
grep: the honest review
The search tool that's already installed on every machine you'll ever touch. Free. Verdict: never...
entr: the honest review
The one-line file-watcher that reruns your tests on save. Free. Verdict: keep it, but remember it...
ncdu vs gdu: the honest review
Two arrow-key disk browsers that don't just draw the picture — they let you delete inside it. The...
choose: the honest review
The kinder cut/awk for grabbing columns. Free, cargo-only. Verdict: keep it for interactive one-l...
DuckDB: the honest review
The analytics database that's just a file: pip install, no server, SQL straight off a CSV. Free. ...
yq: the honest review
jq for YAML, if you can figure out which of the two identically-named yqs you got. Free. Verdict:...
gron: the honest review
The anti-jq: make JSON greppable with plain grep. Free. Verdict: keep it next to jq, mind the arr...
duf: the honest review
The df replacement that boxes your disks into pretty tables. Free. Verdict: great for a quick 'wh...
pip-audit: the honest review
The dependency scanner that catches genuinely known-vulnerable versions fast, then floods you wit...
hexedit: the honest review
The hex editor hexyl can't be. It actually writes bytes. Free. Verdict: keep it for hand-editing ...
procs: the honest review
The ps replacement that searches by keyword and draws a readable table. Free. Verdict: keep it fo...
dust: the honest review
The du replacement that draws a tree. Free. Verdict: keep it for hunting disk hogs, but learn why...
hexyl: the honest review
The xxd/hexdump replacement that paints bytes by category. Free. Verdict: keep it for reading bin...
hyperfine: the honest review
The command-line benchmarking tool that measures repeatably and warns loudly. Free. Verdict: keep...
sd: the honest review
The friendlier sed for search-and-replace. Free. Verdict: keep it, but respect the in-place defau...
delta: the honest review
The syntax-highlighting pager that makes git diffs readable. Free. Verdict: keep it, but the inst...
zoxide: the honest review
The cd replacement that jumps by 'frecency'. Free. Verdict: a real upgrade that only pays off aft...
eza: the honest review
The ls replacement with colors, a git column, and a tree mode. Free. Verdict: a daily upgrade — l...
bat: the honest review
The cat replacement with syntax highlighting. Free. Verdict: great for reading, learn its two sur...
fd: the honest review
The find replacement with sane defaults. Free. Verdict: keep it, but learn what it hides on purpose.
jq: the honest review
The JSON tool you paste and pray. Free. Verdict: keep it, learn five filters, and quote it right.
fzf: the honest review
A fuzzy finder that quietly rewires Ctrl-R, Ctrl-T, and Alt-C. Free. Verdict: wire up the shell b...
ripgrep: the honest review
Faster search, sane defaults, one surprising default. Free. Verdict: install it today.
Note-taking apps: a to-do list with a subscription, reviewed
Three apps, one verdict, and the markdown folder that quietly outscored all of them.
The VS Code extensions I actually keep installed (and the...
Not 23 extensions. The handful that survive a clean reinstall, plus the CLI one-liner to put them...
VS Code as a Python research IDE: conda envs, Jupyter cel...
A free editor that runs cells, stops on breakpoints, and finds the wrong Python by default. Verdi...