Toolkit
Technologies and practices
Six groups, the tools in daily use, not a wish list. Each line says what I do with it. The three on the home page are the ones people ask about first.
01 Backend engineering
PHP first, the right tool next to it
PHP: Laravel, Phalcon, SymfonySince 2008, from 5.x to 8.4, in production
Python, Node.js, GoData pipelines, AI tooling, event-driven services, small daemons
MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, SQLiteSchema design, migrations without downtime, queues and caches
Kotlin, Jetpack ComposeAndroid clients for my own products
02 AI
Agents with guardrails, not a chatbot bolted on
Claude Code, skills, MCPThe daily tool; skills as written procedures, MCP servers in front of APIs
LLM orchestration, agent loopsMulti-step agents, councils of models, a human approval step
RAG, embeddings, evaluation setsLocal code search with LanceDB and Ollama; a test set before any prompt ships
Claude Opus and Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5, Gemini, OpenRouterThe right model per task, with a cost cap per day
Voice: speech to text, TTS, phone agentsA voice assistant on my own phone and server; a Voice AI support line for a client
03 Security
Network, web, hardening, since the BackTrack days
Linux: BackTrack, Kali, BlackArchBackTrack on a live CD around 2008, Kali after it, BlackArch on my laptop today
Network securityInventory and scanning of my own networks, segmentation, firewalls, VPN
Web application testingAuthorization, sessions, injection, dependencies with known vulnerabilities; written authorization first
HardeningSSH, firewall, fail2ban, unattended updates, secrets out of the code, backups that have been restored
04 Architecture and infrastructure
Infrastructure that can be rebuilt from a file
Docker, Ansible, LinuxDebian, Ubuntu and Arch; infrastructure as code, one playbook for staging and production
DigitalOcean, Proxmox, Caddy, nginxSmall cloud boxes and a home lab, TLS by default
Modular monoliths, Strangler FigArchitecture reviews, scalability audits, migrations in daily use
Disaster recoveryBackups off-site, restores tested and timed, monitoring to one phone
05 DevOps and testing
Pipelines that block red
GitHub Actions, CI/CDTests, static analysis and security gates on every push; rollback image kept
PHPUnit, Larastan, PintThe suite runs before merge; nothing merges red
Playwright, browser testingReal pages, light and dark, phone and desktop, before anything deploys
Git: rebase, small releasesOne intent per commit, a rollback for every release, tags for what runs in production
06 Automation
If it repeats, it runs on its own
Python, shell, cron, systemdScrapers, pipelines, nightly jobs, the glue between systems
n8n, webhooks, queuesWorkflows between tools; retries, idempotency and a report when something fails
Agents in the loopAn agent drafts, a person taps; evaluation set, cost cap, switch-off in the runbook
Browser automationPlaywright and Claude in Chrome for the chores that only have a web interface
Missing the one you use?
A stack is chosen on the people who can run it and its total cost, not on this list. Tell me what you run and I say honestly whether I am the right person for it.