Inspired by Derek Sivers’ /uses and the uses.tech directory, here’s a snapshot of what I actually use day to day. I’ll try to keep this updated as things change.
AI Tools — Heavy Use #
AI has completely reshaped how I work. These are the tools I reach for every single day.
Whisper — My starting point for almost everything. I activate it with Option + Spacebar, talk through whatever I’m thinking, and paste the transcription into whichever AI tool I need. Talking is much faster than typing when I’m trying to get a rough idea out.
Claude Code — My primary coding agent. I don’t use extension — I just open the terminal inside my IDE (Pycharm most of the time) and type claude. I find the extension are not as good as the terminal + claude
Claude Cowork — For everything that isn’t code. Writing, research, brainstorming, organizing notes. It pairs especially well with Obsidian — I’ll talk something through with Cowork and then have it save directly into my vault.
Claude Chat — For quick questions and conversations where I just need a good answer, not a workflow.
ChatGPT — Also for questions. I bounce between Claude and ChatGPT depending on the topic and how I’m feeling about the answers I’m getting.
My most common workflow looks like this: Option + Spacebar to activate Whisper → talk through what I’m thinking → paste the transcription into Claude Code, Cowork, or ChatGPT. Voice-first, AI-assisted everything.
AI Tools — Occasional Use #
These I don’t use every day, but I reach for them when the situation calls for it.
DeepSeek — When I think the Chinese internet will have better coverage on a topic. If I’m looking up something that’s more commonly discussed in Chinese-language sources, DeepSeek tends to give me better answers.
Qwen — For multimodal questions where Chinese LLMs have better training data — things like recognizing Chinese handwritten calligraphy, classical Chinese text, etc.
NanoBanana — Image generation and light photo editing. I think it more as a Photoshop tool.
Kling — Video generation. They often more generous monthly free credit than RunwayML
Suno — Music generation. I wrote about this recently — the quality is shockingly good now, even if the songs don’t quite stick in your head the way human-made music does.
Terminal & IDE #
PyCharm — My primary IDE for both production and personal projects. It has everything I need - database tool to run sql queries, excellent for django app building or python application in general, excellent jupyer notebook support.
VS Code — For quick, single-file edits and environment configuration.
iTerm + Oh My Zsh — The terminal setup. I use powerlevel10k zsh theme. And you can see my setup notes here: https://medium.com/data-science/essential-checklist-for-setting-up-your-new-apple-m3-macbook-pro-306e94e974b4
Note: I tried Claude Code’s creator Boris’s suggestion - using multiple terminals or using my coworker’s favorite tool Conductor to run multiple sessions. I found that I’m pretty bad at context switching and I found that I ended up liking opening multiple pycharm windows more aligned with my flow. I like to be able to see the various scripts and folders while I’m talkign to coding agents.
Notes #
Obsidian — My primary notes app. The typical flow these days: talk to Claude Cowork about something, think it through, then ask it to save the result into Obsidian. It’s become my default place for capturing thoughts.
- I customized my obsidian theme (with Claude Code) - the dot grid notebook style background.
- I also use the extention to show cosine similarity of my notes.
Notion — For more structured, permanent notes and docs. I’ll be honest though — I use Notion way less this year ever since I discovered the Obsidian + Claude Cowork flow. The speed of talking → AI → local markdown files is hard to beat.
Browsers #
I use three browsers, each for a different context. It keeps things cleanly separated.
Brave — For watching YouTube and anything where I want ads blocked by default.
Chrome — For work.
Safari — For personal browsing.