What I use

Last updated: May 17, 2026

These are the tools I actually use every day. No affiliate links. If I mention something it’s because I pay for it, use it, and it works — not because I get a commission.

Hardware

• Laptop: Windows 11, 32 GB RAM. Not the newest, not the most expensive. Enough to run Claude Code, Next.js dev, and Screaming Frog in parallel without pain.
• Monitor: external 27" QHD + laptop as secondary. For technical SEO, screen height matters more than absolute resolution.
• Peripherals: decent mechanical keyboard, ergonomic mouse. No gaming gear; gear meant to type 8h/day without injury.

Software base

• Editor: VSCode + Claude Code extension. The Claude Code extension is the single tool that’s changed my day-to-day most in recent months.
• Terminal: PowerShell with Git Bash when needed. No WSL2 for local Python script compatibility.
• Notes / docs: plain markdown in repos. No Notion, no Obsidian. If a note deserves to survive, it lives in a git repo.

SEO technical

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider: still the workhorse for crawls. Paid annual license.
• Semrush: keyword volume, intent, competitive gap, rank tracking. Pro annual plan.
• Ahrefs: deep backlink analysis and top-ranker content study. Lite plan when needed.
• Google Search Console + GA4: the baseline. Irreplaceable.
• DataForSEO API: integrated via MCP in Claude Code for batch SERP, KW research, LLM mentions tracking.
• Schema Validator (Google official): yes, the official one. Not Rich Results Test (which only validates rich-snippet types).

Applied AI

• Claude Code CLI + VSCode extension: central tool for audits, Schema generation, AI-assisted writing (always with human editing), mass review responses.
• Claude API (Opus 4.7 + Haiku): Opus for serious reasoning, Haiku for cheap tasks.
• Playwright: for visual audits and data extraction from rendered pages.
• Python 3.14: for one-off scripts Claude Code doesn’t cover well.

This site

• Stack: Next.js 15 App Router, MDX (next-mdx-remote 6), custom CSS variables (no Tailwind), strict TypeScript, Drizzle ORM + libSQL (Turso).
• Hosting: Hetzner CX23 (~5€/month) + Coolify + Cloudflare CDN/DNS. Auto-deploy from GitHub.
• Analytics: self-hosted Umami (cookieless, GDPR-clean).
• Error tracking: Sentry free tier.

Paid services that earn the money

• Anthropic API (~€80/month).
• DataForSEO API (~€120/month variable).
• Semrush Pro (~€120/month).
• Hetzner + Cloudflare + Turso + Resend free tier (~€10/month infra total).

Inspired by uses.tech. If anything here interests you, write to me.