Tools I Use - 2025 Edition - Reizen dos Santos

Workflows are the most fragile and least evergreen, and yet too many people spend too many days trying to construct the most perfect workflow, which has several dependencies. The second one of those dependencies goes out of date, the whole workflow crumbles.

2024 was a year of refinement and optimization for my digital toolkit. I’ve been focusing on streamlining my workflow, improving productivity, and finding tools that truly fit my needs. This post details the software, services, and CLI utilities that I’ve come to rely on.

Like last year, much of my focus has been on finding the right balance between focused work and managing the constant stream of information and tasks. I’ve also been exploring new approaches to development and deployment.

Here’s a look at the tools that are central to my workflow as I head into 2025:

Daily Drivers#

These are the tools I use almost every day, the core of my digital life.

Obsidian#

I’ve been an Obsidian user for years now, and it’s become the central hub for my notes, ideas, and long-form writing. What keeps me coming back is its flexibility, extensibility, and the fact that it’s built on plain Markdown files. This means I’m not locked into a proprietary format, and my notes are future-proof.

I love how the extensions ecosystem has expanded, meaning for the majority of use-cases you wouldn’t need obscure workarounds. Though I refrain from heavily modifying how my text is structured. I prefer to keep things relatively simple and focus on content.

Key features I appreciate:

Bidirectional Linking: The ability to easily create links between notes is invaluable for building a web of knowledge and making connections between ideas. The ==local graph== is a great way to visualize this.
Markdown: I prefer writing in Markdown, and Obsidian’s support is excellent.
Plugin Ecosystem: The community plugins are fantastic for extending Obsidian’s functionality.

Here are the plugins I use in some extend:

PlantUML and Mermaid: For diagramming and visualizing complex concepts. I use them for flowcharts, sequence diagrams, and more.
Tasks: For basic task management within my notes.
Dataview: For creating dynamic views of my notes based on metadata. This is incredibly powerful for organizing and surfacing information.
Journal: For daily journaling and reflection. I like to keep a record of my thoughts and activities (sometimes).
Git: For version control of my notes. I use it to keep track of changes and ensure I don’t lose any important information.

Browser (Edge + Firefox)#

I primarily use Edge for general browsing and Firefox for development. Each browser has its strengths, and I appreciate the unique features they offer.

These are the plugins I use currently:

daily.dev: I stumble upon interesting articles and resources every day. It’s where I go when I’m bored sometimes.
Bitwarden: My password manager of choice. It’s secure, open-source, and works seamlessly across all my devices.
uBlock Origin: Because who can live without an ad blocker? It blocks ads, trackers, and other unwanted content.

Tampermonkey: A userscript manager that allows me to customize websites with custom JavaScript.
- Endless Google: Automatically loads the next page of Google search results.
- Remove web limits: Lifts restrictions on copying, selecting, and right-clicking on websites.
Obsidian Web Clipper: To save articles directly to my Obsidian vault for later reading and processing.
Raindrop.io: To organize my bookmarks and save interesting articles and resources. I don’t use it as much as I should, but it’s a great tool for keeping track of things I might want to revisit later.
Wikiwand: Make Wikipedia look leaner and more modern.
Refined Hacker News: Improves the look and feel of Hacker News.
Return Youtube Dislikes: Brings back the dislike count on YouTube videos.

Dropped plugins:

Markownload: Replaced by Obsidian Web Clipper, which offers better integration with my note-taking workflow.
Lighthouse: For now the https://pagespeed.web.dev/ suffices for my cases. I find the online tool to be sufficient for occasional performance testing.
ChatHub: The beam feature in https://agi.reizen-desu.com ended up replacing it. Plus, it’s just so much better.
Universal bypass: Discontinued.

Bruno#

I made the switch from Postman (and briefly, the VS Code Thunder Client extension) to Bruno for API testing this past year. Postman felt increasingly heavy and required an online account for features I didn’t need. Thunder Client was convenient but tied my requests to specific VS Code profiles/workspaces.

Why I prefer Bruno:

Offline-first: I can work on my API requests even without an internet connection.
Lightweight: It’s much faster and less resource-intensive than Postman.
File-Based Storage: API requests are stored as plain text files, making them easy to version control and share.

MusicBee#

MusicBee is my go-to music player on Windows. I’ve tried many players over the years, but MusicBee strikes the perfect balance of features, customization, and performance.

Key features I appreciate:

Customizable Interface: It’s been two years since I last styled it, and I still love the way it looks.
Powerful Tagging and Organization: MusicBee makes it easy to organize my music library with its advanced tagging features.
Automatic Tagging: Can automatically retrieve metadata and artwork from the internet.

MusicBee Scrobbling
I use the built-in scrobbling feature to sync my play history with Last.fm. This allows me to keep track of my listening habits and discover new music based on my preferences.

Development Tools#

Tools specifically related to coding, building, and shipping software.

VS Code#

VS Code remains my primary code editor for most projects.

Key Extensions I use across all profiles:

Prettier / ESLint: For code formatting and linting.
GitLens: Enhances the built-in Git capabilities.
GitHub Copilot: AI-powered code completion and suggestions.

VS Code Theming
I use Material Icon Theme for the icons. For the font, I use Hack font. I change my theme every now and then, but the default Dark+ theme is still the one I use most of the time.

Version Control (Git & GitHub)#

Git is essential for my workflow, and GitHub remains my platform of choice for repositories and collaboration. I’m currently studying for the GitHub Foundations certification, which has been a great way to formalize my knowledge and discover platform features I wasn’t fully utilizing.

Services#

Online services that support my workflow or provide essential infrastructure.

Cloudflare#

I use Cloudflare extensively for:

DNS Management: Managing domains and DNS records.
CDN & Caching: Improving site performance globally.
Pages: Deploying static sites with excellent performance.
Workers: For simple serverless functions when needed.

GitHub#

Beyond version control, I use GitHub for:

Issue tracking: Managing tasks and bugs for personal projects.
Actions: Automating builds, tests, and deployments.
Pages: Hosting documentation and simple sites.
Discussions: For community interaction on open-source projects.

Netlify#

I use Netlify for hosting static sites and deploying front-end projects. It’s incredibly easy to set up and integrates well with GitHub for continuous deployment. However, I’ve started using Cloudflare Pages for most of my static site hosting needs for the domains I own.

Other Services#

Vercel: For hosting Next.js applications and serverless functions. This is where agi.reizen-desu.com is hosted.
Heroku: For hosting small applications and APIs. I use it for a personal chatbot on Telegram.

Media Creation & Editing#

Tools I use for creating and editing various media formats.

Image Optimization:
- JPGMiniPro / Pngyu: Quick desktop tools for lossy compression of JPGs and PNGs, respectively.
Video Compression:
- Handbrake: Powerful, open-source tool for transcoding and compressing videos. Essential for reducing file sizes while maintaining quality.
Audio Recording/Editing:
- Audacity: The open-source standard for straightforward audio recording and editing tasks.
Screen Recording & Streaming:
- OBS Studio: Incredibly powerful and free tool for screen recording and streaming. Steep learning curve initially, but unmatched flexibility.
- Voicemeeter: Virtual audio mixer for Windows. Essential for routing audio between applications, microphones, and outputs, especially when recording or streaming. Makes karaoke sessions a breeze 🎤.
- ShareX: For quick screen captures and GIFs. I use it for sharing snippets or quick tutorials.
Quick Design/Editing:
- Canva: Used for quick social media graphics or simple design tasks when I don’t need the full power (or complexity) of Photoshop.

Other Useful Tools#

Miscellaneous utilities that don’t fit neatly elsewhere but are valuable additions to my toolkit.

7-Zip: The file archiver I’ve used for years. Open-source, powerful, and supports numerous formats.
ShareX: For screenshots, screen recording, and quick image editing. The workflow automation features are particularly useful.
Calibre: For managing my e-book library and converting formats for my e-reader.
Everything (by voidtools): Lightning-fast file search on Windows. Finds files in milliseconds where Windows Search would take seconds or minutes.

Dropped This Year#

Tools I stopped using over time. I honestly don’t remember all of them, but here are some that come to mind:

Todoist: Replaced by Obsidian Tasks.
Notion: Replaced by Obsidian.
Zeal: I can find everything I need online.

Conclusion#

This is the first series of posts where I share my current tools and services. Not all of them were included, and I feel like I could have added more. I might add more sections in the future, but for now, this is a good starting point I guess.

I’ll keep updating yearly~