Ship faster with the right tools
Honest reviews, setup guides, and workflow tips for developer tools. From terminals to CI pipelines, we cover what actually helps you build better software.
Watchexec: A Universal File Watcher That Runs Any Command
Watchexec watches files and re-runs arbitrary commands on change. Learn its filters, debouncing, signal handling, and how it compares to entr and nodemon.
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Rolldown: The Rust-Based Bundler Unifying Rollup and esbuild
Rolldown is a fast Rust-based JavaScript bundler designed as a drop-in Rollup replacement with esbuild-level speed. Learn how it works and when to use it.
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Neon: Serverless Postgres That Branches Like Git
How Neon separates compute from storage to give you instant database branching, scale-to-zero, and a generous free tier for Postgres.
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PGlite: Running PostgreSQL in the Browser and Node.js
Learn how PGlite lets you run a real PostgreSQL database in WebAssembly — in the browser, Node.js, and Bun — with full SQL support and zero server setup.
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OpenTofu: The Open-Source Terraform Fork You Should Know About
A practical guide to OpenTofu — what changed from Terraform, how to migrate, and when it makes sense for your infrastructure.
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act: Run GitHub Actions Locally Without Pushing to GitHub
Learn how to use act to run GitHub Actions workflows locally, speed up CI development cycles, and debug failing pipelines without cloud commits.
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PocketBase: A Complete Backend in a Single Binary
Learn how PocketBase gives you auth, a database, file storage, and a REST API in one executable — and when it's the right choice for your project.
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LocalStack: Local AWS Development Without Cloud Bills
Run AWS services locally with LocalStack. Eliminate cloud costs during development, speed up feedback loops, and test infrastructure code without touching your AWS account.
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Zod: TypeScript-First Schema Validation for Any Runtime
Zod is the standard for runtime type validation in TypeScript projects. Covers the core API, parsing vs. safeParse, schema composition, and practical patterns for API validation and form handling.
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Cloudflare Workers: Edge Functions for JavaScript Developers
Cloudflare Workers runs JavaScript and TypeScript at the edge in 300+ locations. This guide covers the runtime, KV storage, Durable Objects, Workers AI, local development with Wrangler, and when Workers outperforms traditional servers.
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Hono: The Ultra-Fast Web Framework for Edge, Serverless, and Node.js
Hono is a lightweight, high-performance web framework that runs on Cloudflare Workers, Bun, Deno, and Node.js. Learn how it works, when to use it, and why it's replacing Express for many use cases.
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shadcn/ui: Copy-Paste Component Library for React and Tailwind
shadcn/ui is not a traditional npm package — it's a collection of beautifully designed, accessible React components you copy into your project and own completely. Here's how to use it effectively.
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Deno 2: What Changed and Why It Matters
Deno 2 brings Node.js and npm compatibility, a built-in package manager (JSR), and LTS releases. Covers migration from Deno 1, the new deno.json workspace format, and when to choose Deno 2 over Node.js or Bun.
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Slidev: Code Your Presentations in Markdown
Slidev lets developers write slides in Markdown with Vue components, syntax-highlighted code, live coding, and built-in presenter mode — all from a single .md file.
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TypeSpec: API Design Before Code
TypeSpec is Microsoft's API design language that generates OpenAPI, JSON Schema, Protobuf, and more from a single source of truth. Covers installation, writing specs, code generation, and integrating into CI.
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DuckDB: The Analytics Database That Runs Everywhere
DuckDB is an in-process analytics database with no server required. Covers querying CSV and Parquet files, Python integration, SQL features, and where it fits compared to SQLite and BigQuery.
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commitlint: Enforce Conventional Commit Messages Automatically
commitlint validates Git commit messages against a convention, blocking non-conforming commits at the hook level. Combined with Conventional Commits, it enables automatic changelog generation and semantic versioning.
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Dagger: Programmable CI/CD Pipelines in Code
Dagger lets you write CI/CD pipelines as code in TypeScript, Go, or Python, running identically on your laptop and in CI. Replaces YAML configuration with type-safe, testable pipeline logic that works with any CI provider.
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Contract Testing with Pact: Consumer-Driven API Testing
Pact enables consumer-driven contract testing between microservices. Instead of integration tests that require running all services, Pact verifies that providers fulfill the contracts their consumers define — without the full stack.
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mise: Modern Dev Tools Version Manager
mise (previously rtx) is a fast, polyglot version manager for development tools — Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, Rust, and hundreds more. It replaces nvm, pyenv, rbenv, and asdf with a single faster tool that reads .tool-versions and .mise.toml files.
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Vitest: Fast Unit Testing for Vite-Based JavaScript Projects
Vitest is a blazing-fast unit test framework built on Vite. It reuses your existing Vite config, supports ESM natively, and runs tests in parallel — making it the natural replacement for Jest in modern JS projects.