Working solo means every tool needs to earn its place. There's no ops team to manage infrastructure, no designer to hand off Figma files, no QA team to catch bugs. It's just you. Here's what I use.
Editor: VS Code
I've tried them all. Vim, Neovim, Sublime, WebStorm, Zed. I keep coming back to VS Code. The extension ecosystem is unmatched, GitHub Copilot integration is seamless, and the built-in terminal means I rarely leave the editor.
Key extensions: ESLint, Prettier, GitLens, Thunder Client (for API testing), and the Tailwind CSS IntelliSense. That's it. I don't install fifty extensions — each one slows the editor down.
Terminal: Windows Terminal + WSL
I develop on Windows but run everything through WSL2. Ubuntu in a terminal, Docker when needed, and SSH for server management. It's the best of both worlds — Windows for the desktop experience, Linux for the dev environment.
Version control: Git + GitHub
Git for everything. Even solo projects. Even throwaway scripts. Commit messages are documentation. Branch history is a changelog. git blame reminds you why you made that weird decision three months ago.
I use GitHub for hosting, Actions for CI/CD, and Issues for tracking work. It's free for personal projects and cheap for orgs.
Hosting: VPS + nginx
One VPS runs everything. OVH for the server, Cloudflare for DNS and SSL, nginx as the reverse proxy, PM2 for process management. Total cost: about $15/month for a server that runs six live projects simultaneously.
I avoid PaaS platforms for production work. They're great for prototypes but expensive at scale and limit your control. A VPS costs less and teaches you more.
Design: Browser + CSS
I don't use Figma. I design in the browser. Start with a basic HTML structure, add Tailwind classes, and iterate live. It's faster than designing in one tool and rebuilding in another.
For color palettes, I use Realtime Colors. For icons, Lucide. For fonts, Google Fonts. All free, all excellent.
Communication: Cal.com + Discord + Email
Cal.com for scheduling client calls. Discord for async communication. Email for everything formal. No Slack — it's designed to steal your attention, and as a solo developer, attention is your most valuable resource.
The anti-toolkit
Equally important is what I don't use. No Jira. No Confluence. No Notion (for project management). No Docker for development. No Kubernetes. No microservices architecture for a project that could be a monolith.
Every tool you add is a tool you have to maintain, update, and context-switch to. As a solo developer, simplicity isn't just nice — it's survival.