dSebastien
My current Indie Hacking toolkit

My current Indie Hacking toolkit

Sebastien Dubois's photo
Sebastien Dubois
·

6 min read

I thought I could share my current Indie Hacking toolkit. Hopefully, you'll find something interesting in here! A large portion of those tools can be used for free.

Note that only a tiny fraction of those tools are necessary, depending on the business you create/run. Keep in mind that a toolbox is just something that contains a set of tools that you might need. You don't have to pick them all at once. They're in your toolbox, and you can pick them up when you need to use them. Moreover, you don't need to get all of those at once. You can get new tools when you actually need those 🔧.

Alright, let's go! 🚀

My favorite Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), note-taking & journaling tools

My favorite productivity tools

My favorite software development tools

  • IDE: IntelliJ (Feels so much better to use than VS Code), VS Code (because it's useful too from time to time) + VS Code extension packs (dsebastien.net/blog/2019-11-24-vs-code-exte..)
  • SCM: Git + Hub (github.com/github/hub)
  • Git GUI: GitKraken (gitkraken.com/invite/jdXvWeMU). Very pleasing UI for Git, allowing to quickly add/remove hunks (my favorite feature of Git, along with rebase) (heads up: I'm an ambassador for them!)
  • Source Code hosting, CI & CD: GitHub & Gitlab
  • Code formatting: Prettier (prettier.io) because we have better things to do than format code by hand or waste time comparing code style diffs
  • Scripting & shell: Bash & ZSH, tmux
  • Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL): To feel right at home even on Windows
  • ConEmu + Git Bash + Notepad++ when stuck in Windows-land, configured with a Quake-style dropdown terminal
  • Linux Terminal: Tilda (main now), Yakuake (past) and Terminator (I'll be back...)
  • Notepadqq on *nix
  • User Story Maps and brainstorming: Miro (miro.com)
  • UX & UI: Figma (figma.com)
  • Schemas: Diagram.net, Excalidraw (excalidraw.com), Visual Paradigm Community Edition
  • Logos: Logology (logology.co)
  • Documentation, knowledge base, processes, etc: Notion
  • Lightshot for screenshots (Windows)
  • Correcting mistyped commands: thefuck (github.com/nvbn/thefuck)
  • Testing API calls: HTTPIE (httpie.io) and Insomnia (insomnia.rest)
  • FTP & al: FileZilla (filezilla-project.org)
  • Network analysis: WireShark (wireshark.org) and nmap
  • tldr for avoiding wasting days in man pages (tldr.sh)
  • Installers: SDKMan (sdkman.io), Winget (github.com/microsoft/winget-cli), Homebrew (brew.sh), Volta (volta.sh)
  • Spotify (can't live without this one)
  • f.lux to save my eyes (justgetflux.com)
  • The Chrome Dev Tools and tons of extensions

My current tech stack

My favorite writing tools

Where to find images and illustrations

Where to find fonts

Where I store my files

  • Google Drive
  • Synology NAS (DS1812+)
  • Amazon S3
  • Digital Ocean

Remote backup services

  • Backblaze (backblaze.com)
  • Amazon Glacier (I'm moving away though)

Tools you can use to find product and domain names

What I use to check social handles availability

Social handle availability:

What I use to find UI inspiration

Tools you can use to look for existing trademarks

Tools I use for SEO

Tools I use for CRM, Invoicing, etc

Tools I use to create landing pages

Services to host and serve images

Password management tools

  • KeePass (yes, I'm old school)

Solutions for online banking and payments

Tools to sell infoproducts

  • Gumroad (gumroad.com): great because it acts as the Merchant of Record (MoR)

Tools for publishing newsletters (free and paid)

Tools to create online polls

Tools to create Slide decks (😂)

Tools for video recording

Tools for video editing

  • Adobe Premiere Pro

Tools for image editing

Tools for 3D modeling

Tools for audio recording

Tools for streaming

Communication tools

  • Twitter
  • Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams
  • Calls: Zoom
  • Book meetings: Calendly (calendly.com)
  • Instant messaging: Telegram
  • Work & projects: LinkedIn, Polywork with a custom domain (updates.dsebastien.net)

Tools for audience building

Tools and sites for staying up to date

Communities that support Indie Hackers and tools for community building/management

Conclusion

In this article, I've listed many of the tools in my toolbox. There are some more, but those are the main ones. You don't have to feel overwhelmed or intimidated by this list. You probably don't need many of those. There are an infinity of tools, but we should only care about those we really need. Don't bring more tools in your life than you need to.

That's it for today! ✨

About Sébastien

Hello everyone! I'm Sébastien Dubois. I'm an author, founder, and CTO. I write books and articles about programming (TypeScript, Web, React, Angular, NestJS, etc), personal knowledge management, personal organization, and productivity.

If you've enjoyed this article then subscribe to my newsletter: newsletter.dsebastien.net

You can follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/dSebastien 🐦