Process
April 8, 2026 · 6 min read
Working with fewer tools.
An argument for shipping with the smallest stack you can stand. The five tools I keep, the ones I quietly removed, and what changed when I did.
Every year for the last three years I have removed a tool from the list and not added one to replace it. The list is now five. The website you are reading was made with all five. None of the others get the time back, but the people who hired me do.
The cost of one more tool.
A new tool costs more than its monthly fee. It costs the time you spend learning the parts you will never use. It costs the moment in a kickoff when you have to explain why you use it. It costs the small drift that happens when half the team picks one and half the team picks the other. None of those are line items on the invoice.
What I keep.
Five tools, in priority order — the rest are negotiable.
- Figma — every layout, every spec, every component lives here.
- A code editor — anything that opens fast and gets out of the way.
- A payments provider — boring on purpose, which is the point.
- A notes app — for the half-ideas that turn into the next quarter's work.
- Claude — the pair programmer that compresses three of the above.
What changed.
Two things: project setup is faster, and handoffs are quieter. Setup is faster because there is one fewer thing to install. Handoffs are quieter because the next person on the project does not have to learn a sixth tool to read what I left behind.
Subtraction is the most underrated form of design work I have ever done.
Working on something like this?