• It’s a mix of well-maintained tools and some smaller ones. Use at your own risk.

Papers

• Zotero and Zotero Connector
  • Very powerful for collating papers
  • https://www.zotero.org/
  • https://www.zotero.org/download/connectors
• Better BibTeX for Zotero
  • Gives predictable citekeys for papers
  • https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/
• Bibiman TUI bibliography manager
  • I export my Zotero library to a bib file using Better BibTeX with auto update and then Bibiman reads that bib file.
  • Quick keybindings to search, open files/link and to copy citekeys
  • https://codeberg.org/lukeflo/bibiman
• Sioyek PDF reader
  • Power user PDF reader, but not fully mature yet, need to build it.
  • Highlight reference in paper and press ss to search Google Scholar for it
  • Internal links, references, figures and tables open in an overlay window when pressing l.
  • https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek
    • Last stable release is from 2022, but there are build instructions in GitHub Issues, eg: https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek/discussions/1602

Terminal

• Kitty
  • Allows for some tools with images in the terminal (Eg I’ve used TDF in the past, a PDF reader within the terminal)
  • https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/
  • Not the best integration with macOS, eg Finder lets you open in Terminal but not in Kitty
• Neovim
  • Using LazyVim
  • Still teaching myself keybindings, using them within VS Code, Obsidian and Overleaf, but still stray hjkl letters in my documents.
  • https://neovim.io/
  • https://www.lazyvim.org/
• Atuin for shell history
  • Very useful
  • Can filter by session, or repo among other options
  • https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin
• Starship for Zsh prompt
  • Fun but interferes slightly at times with my terminal.
  • https://starship.rs/

Browser

• Zen Browser
  • Used to use Arc, but it seems to be in maintenance mode now, so Zen is almost a drop-in replacement
  • Based on Firefox, every once in a while use Chrome if there’s an issue
  • Vertical tab bar and spaces for tabs
  • https://zen-browser.app/

Writing

• Obsidian
  • For markdown notes although moving away from it a bit, might prefer something in the terminal, or something fully open source.
  • It is simple enough and gets the job done. Used to use Notion a lot, but I don’t need the complexity and options
  • https://obsidian.md/
• LaTeX in Overleaf, Nvim and VS Code.
  • https://www.overleaf.com/
• Beamer in LaTeX for slides
  • I find it fiddly, but still haven’t found an alternative (eg: a markdown slides tool) that I like yet.

Version control

• Git and GitHub
  • https://github.com/
• Jujutsu VCS
  • Can colocate with Git
  • I’m generally working on my own, so can’t comment on collaboration, but I find it simpler than Git on my own.
  • https://docs.jj-vcs.dev/latest/
  • jjui within the terminal
    • Really excellent tool.
    • https://github.com/idursun/jjui
  • lazyjj within Nvim
    • https://github.com/swaits/lazyjj.nvim

Package managers

• Homebrew
  • https://brew.sh/
• uv
  • Still learning how to use and why it is useful, but seems to be the best option for Python packages
  • https://docs.astral.sh/uv/