The Solo Developer's Toolkit (2026 Edition)

As a solo developer, you wear every hat: Product Manager, Designer, QA Tester, and DevOps Engineer. To survive this chaos, you need a toolkit that amplifies your output.

Here are the tools I rely on daily to ship faster.

1. Design & Inspiration: Figma

Figma is where everything starts. I don't write a single line of code until I have a high-fidelity mockup.

"A minute spent in Figma saves an hour in VS Code."

I also use Shotots for quick inspiration and Coolors for generating accessible color palettes.

2. Planning: Linear

I used to use Trello, but Linear is in a league of its own. It is designed for software teams, but it works beautifully for solo hackers too. The keyboard shortcuts alone make it worth it.

• Cycles: I break my work into 1-week cycles to keep momentum.
• Issues: Every bug and feature request gets logged immediately.

3. Testing: Postman & Insomnia

When building APIs for dsa-hub, relying on console.log wasn't enough. Postman allows me to save collections of requests, automate testing, and document my API endpoints for future me (who will definitely forget how they work).

4. The Terminal: Warp

I recently switched to Warp and haven't looked back. It treats the terminal like a text editor.

5. Capturing Thoughts: Obsidian

My second brain. I use Obsidian for everything from lecture notes to architectural diagrams. The local-first markdown approach means I own my data forever.

Conclusion

Tools don't make the developer, but the right tools remove the friction between your idea and reality. Experiment with these, but remember: the best tool is the one you actually use.