Uses
Uses
The tools I actually reach for. Not aspirational — this is what Hawzu is built with.
Hardware
- MacBook Pro (M5) Fast enough for everything I do, including the parts that shouldn't need to be.
- LG 34" ultrawide One screen. Fewer places for attention to go.
- Keychron K2 Mechanical, and the one peripheral I've never wanted to replace.
Editor & shell
- VS Code Primary editor, with Claude Code running inside it.
- zsh on macOS Default shell; most things start as a one-liner.
AI
- Claude Code Pair programming, large refactors, and reviews. Most useful on the work that is tedious rather than hard.
- ChatGPT Research, writing, and thinking out loud about product decisions.
Backend
- Python + FastAPI The Hawzu API. Fast to write, typed where it counts.
- MongoDB Primary store. Also backs the background job queue.
- Redis Cache and session store. Deliberately optional — the app degrades without it.
Frontend
- React + Vite The Hawzu app SPA.
- Mantine Component library for the app. Saves months of primitives.
- Astro Every static site — this one, the marketing site, docs, and the blog.
Infrastructure
- Google Cloud Cloud Run for the API, GCS + a shared HTTPS load balancer for static sites.
- Cloud Build Every deploy. One config per site, triggered off its own branch.
- Porkbun Domain registrar and DNS.
I keep this list deliberately short. Every technology on it is something I have to understand, deploy, debug and upgrade alone — so anything that earns a place has to be worth carrying, not just worth trying.