Essentials. Curated. —

AeroSpace

i3-inspired tiling window management for macOS. It keeps workspace movement keyboard-first without replacing the whole desktop.

AppCleaner

A small uninstaller that finds related support files when removing apps. Useful for keeping experiments from leaving cruft behind.

boringNotch

An open-source notch utility that turns unused screen hardware into a small control surface for status and media workflows.

Caffeine

A tiny menu bar toggle for keeping a Mac awake. Still useful when long-running jobs, transfers, or demos need the machine to stay up.

CodeEdit

A native macOS code editor project. Interesting as a lightweight editor and as a reference point for Swift-native developer tooling.

Demucs-GUI

A graphical front end for Demucs-style audio source separation. Useful when media workflows need stems without turning every task into a CLI session.

DockDoor

Dock previews and window switching for macOS. It makes crowded app sessions easier to inspect without changing the whole window manager.

dupeGuru

Duplicate-file detection for local storage cleanup. Useful after migrations, exports, media work, and repeated sync experiments.

Hammerspoon

Lua automation for macOS. It is a programmable layer for window behavior, hotkeys, app control, and small personal operating-system patches.

Handy

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Offline speech-to-text for quickly turning spoken notes into text. Useful for capture workflows where cloud dictation is the wrong trust boundary.

Hidden Bar

A lightweight menu bar organizer. It keeps always-running utilities available without letting them dominate the top edge of the screen.

ImageOptim

Image compression for publishing and documentation. It keeps screenshots and assets lean without adding a heavy media pipeline.

Karabiner-Elements

Deep keyboard customization for macOS. The only tool that lets you remap caps lock to escape and control at the same time.

LinearMouse

Per-device mouse and trackpad tuning for macOS. Useful when moving between Apple input devices, external mice, and multi-display desks.

Maccy

A focused clipboard manager for macOS. It makes repeated snippets, commands, and references retrievable without turning clipboard history into a database.

macshot

A native screenshot and recording tool with annotation, OCR, scrolling capture, and redaction. Useful for documentation and bug reports.

MarkEdit

A native Markdown editor for macOS. Useful for quick notes and focused writing without loading a full knowledge-management system.

MonitorControl

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Brightness, volume, and display controls for external monitors. It makes multi-monitor macOS setups feel less bolted together.

Obsidian

Local-first Markdown note-taking with backlinks and a plugin ecosystem. My second brain for architecture decisions and research.

OrbStack

A fast container and Linux VM environment for macOS. It keeps local infrastructure work light enough to stay in the daily loop.

Orion

A WebKit browser from Kagi with a privacy-forward posture. Useful as an alternate research browser and testing surface.

Pearcleaner

A modern app cleaner and Homebrew-aware utility for macOS. Useful when tool churn needs cleanup with more visibility.

RsyncUI

A graphical interface for rsync. Useful when repeatable backup and sync jobs need visibility without hiding the underlying primitive.

TaskExplorer

A process inspection utility from Objective-See. Useful for understanding what is running, what it loaded, and what it is talking to.

The Unarchiver

A dependable archive extractor for formats macOS does not handle gracefully. Boring in the best way.

Tunnelblick

An OpenVPN client for macOS. Useful for legacy network access, lab connections, and environments where WireGuard is not the available path.

Upscayl

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AI image upscaling in a desktop app. Useful for improving rough assets and screenshots before they land in documentation or posts.

XnView MP

Image browsing, conversion, and batch operations in one desktop tool. Useful when media folders need inspection and cleanup at scale.

Bumblebee

A local-first agent harness with personality, memory, and gateway concepts. Useful to study as another experiment in long-running agent design.

Claude Code

Anthropic's terminal coding agent. Useful as a reference point for agentic editing, MCP workflows, permissions, and long-running repo work.

Codex CLI

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OpenAI's terminal coding agent. Useful for repo work, plan-driven edits, code review loops, and testing agent workflows from the shell.

CodexBar

A menu bar monitor for AI coding assistant usage windows and limits. Helpful when multiple agents are part of the daily development loop.

Deep Agents Code

A terminal coding agent built on LangChain's Deep Agents stack. Useful for comparing agent scaffolding, model routing, and tool behavior.

goose

Block's local AI agent for engineering tasks. Useful for comparing MCP-first agent workflows and local development automation.

Hermes Agent

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A self-hosted agent runtime with memory, tools, messaging, and scheduled work. Useful as a benchmark for what long-running agents need beyond chat.

Lobe Chat

An open-source, extensible chat UI for LLMs. Supports OpenAI, Anthropic, and local models via Ollama. Beautiful, fast, and self-hostable.

oMLX

A local inference server for Apple Silicon built around MLX. Useful for testing local model backends behind coding agents and chat surfaces.

Open WebUI

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A self-hosted web interface for local and remote models. Useful as the front door for local LLM testing, team demos, and model comparison.

OpenCode

An open-source coding agent for the terminal and editor workflows. Useful as a local-first alternative in the AI coding tool bench.

OpenHands CLI

A terminal and ACP-capable OpenHands client. Useful for comparing browser, IDE, headless, and TUI patterns for software agents.