The actual software I run my life on.

Every note I take starts here. Local markdown, fast graph, a plugin ecosystem I can live with. Local-first means my data stays mine, and markdown means Claude Code can read every word of it. The vault behind RonOS lives here.

Frictionless, opens instantly, syncs everywhere. The right tool for the unstructured stuff that doesn't need a home in the vault yet.

Home of The Degenerate. The distribution is real and the writing experience is solid. Hard to argue with.

Best-in-class for team databases and shared docs. As a solo notes system it was the wrong shape, too structured too early, but it earns its keep on collaborative work.

Where most of the software on this list got built. Also where my daily-brief, weekly-review, and vault-sync scripts live. If I had to pick one tool from this whole page, it's this one.

The chat app for two jobs. On the laptop it's where I pressure-test decisions before any code runs. On the phone it's where ideas get captured on walks: I dictate, and it files the thought into RonOS. By the time I sit back down, it's already in the right note.

Wispr Flow is on right now, in fact. SuperWhisper at work, Wispr Flow in personal life. Both turn voice into text the moment I stop talking. Paired with a hotkey, this is the fastest "capture" tool I've ever used. Good ideas come on walks; this is how they survive the walk.

A small collection of command-line tools and lightweight API scripts I use to plumb data into the vault. Google Workspace CLI for calendar and docs, custom integrations for Whoop, Eight Sleep, Monarch, and the rest of the health and finance side. Less elegant than they sound, more useful than they look.

Kept around for the occasional second opinion from a different model family. Claude is the daily driver, but I still poke at GPT when I want a different angle.

Boring, which is the point. Industry standard, great extensions, and a clean home for Claude Code to live inside. Personal projects and work both run here.

Public-by-default unless there's a reason not to be. RonOS, ronforbes.com, and a graveyard of old game-dev experiments all live here. Closest thing I have to a portfolio.

The framework powering this website. Server-side rendering, great DX, sensible defaults. I migrated off Notion + Super.so because I wanted control over performance and SEO.

Two-minute deploys, generous free tier, basically zero yak-shaving. ronforbes.com and most of my side projects deploy here.

Just for domain registration and DNS. Boring choice that's never let me down.

The default macOS Terminal still gets the job done, but I've been spending more time in Ghostty lately. Fast, clean, opinionated in a way that gets out of the way once you settle in.

Chrome on the laptop, Safari on the phone. Boring, which is the point. The DevTools muscle memory wins on desktop; the battery and Apple-ecosystem integration win on mobile.

Where the day actually happens. Personal + work overlay, nothing fancy.

The to-do list. RonOS reads from and writes to it, so things I capture in the vault show up on my phone, and things I check off on my phone show up back in the vault.

My daily brief lands here as a text from the Claude desktop app. The system finds me where I already am, no extra app to open.

All-in-one personal finance dashboard. Replaced Mint when Mint died. The numbers I actually look at every Sunday for the financial scorecard.

Auto-transcribed meeting notes that pipe into the vault for later review. Genuinely great. I'm a huge fan, and it's earned a spot in the daily flow at work.

Quiet enough to write next to, fast enough for everything I throw at it, with battery life that lets me work from a coffee shop without thinking about an outlet. The whole stack on this page runs on this one machine.

Occupational hazard. Also genuinely where the most interesting interaction problems are right now, and I use it for productivity sessions more than I'd have guessed five years ago.

Premium spatial computing, with the Apple-ecosystem integration I get for free elsewhere on this list. A useful counterpoint to Quest, and a window into how the other side is thinking.

Claude on mobile + Wispr Flow is most of what my phone is for at this point. Best camera I've owned, deep integration with everything else Apple.

Excellent noise cancellation, seamless device switching, comfortable for the long writing sessions. The default headphones for everything that isn't music production.

The recovery and strain layer. Recovery score in my morning brief comes from here. Easier to wear all day than a watch and tells me more about how the night went.

The newest addition. Combined with Whoop and Eight Sleep, it's giving me the most comprehensive picture of my sleep, recovery, and activity I've ever had. Three sources triangulating the same question is more useful than I'd have guessed.

Sleep quality compounds into the rest of the system: focus, mood, recovery, output. The temperature control alone is worth the asking price.