$ cat ~/.stack → what i build with daily

The operator stack.
Every tool. Why. What it costs.

Opinionated, not exhaustive. The tools I actually use, ranked by frequency. Daily-rotation marked with a green dot. Monthly costs are honest — the totals at the bottom of each category include only what I pay personally.

● DAILY DRIVER ○ OCCASIONAL RED CARD = DELIBERATELY AVOIDED
01 · CODE + SHIP
MONTHLY · ~$40
Claude Code
Primary dev surface. Sub-agents, MCP, hooks, headless mode — the whole package. Replaced VS Code as my default.
$20 / mo
DAILY
Vercel
Hosting + serverless + cron + KV. Hobby tier covers most personal projects; Pro for client work.
$0–20 / mo
DAILY
TypeScript
Default for anything past a one-file script. Strict mode on. Auto-fix saves on commit.
FREE
DAILY
Cursor
Backup for VS Code-native moments. Tab completion is still best-in-class.
$20 / mo
OCCASIONAL
v0
UI scaffolds. React + Tailwind components in minutes. Port to production after.
USAGE-BASED
OCCASIONAL
02 · AI + AGENTS
MONTHLY · ~$60 (API)
Anthropic API
Claude 4.7 Opus for code + reasoning, Sonnet 4.6 for high-volume. Token-based pricing, prompt caching cuts ~70%.
~$40 / mo
DAILY
MCP
Model Context Protocol — plugins for Claude. Filesystem, GitHub, Playwright, Obsidian, custom servers.
FREE PROTOCOL
DAILY
OpenAI / GPT-5
For comparison work + specific tasks where GPT pulls ahead. Not the primary.
USAGE-BASED
OCCASIONAL
Gemini 3 / NotebookLM
Best research synthesis tool right now. 1M-token context. Audio overviews are a 10x feature.
FREE / $20
OCCASIONAL
03 · DATA + INFRA
MONTHLY · ~$30
Vercel KV
Redis-compatible key-value store on Vercel. Default for idempotency keys, session state, cron-job memory.
USAGE-BASED
DAILY
Vercel Cron
Scheduled functions. Replaces n8n / Make for me. Code in repo, versioned, debugable.
INCLUDED
DAILY
Supabase
Postgres + auth + RLS for any app that needs a real database. Free tier handles most personal projects.
$0–25 / mo
OCCASIONAL
Resend
Transactional email API. Clean SDK, easy DKIM, good deliverability. Default mail provider.
FREE TIER
OCCASIONAL
Stripe
Payments. Standard.
2.9% + 30¢
OCCASIONAL
04 · CONTENT + GROWTH
MONTHLY · ~$50
Beehiiv
Newsletter. 0% on paid subs, built-in ads marketplace, Boost Network for cross-promo growth.
FREE–$49 / mo
DAILY
Plausible
Privacy-friendly analytics. No cookie banner, EU-friendly, $9/mo. Replaced GA4.
$9 / mo
DAILY
Whop
Community + checkout. 3% platform + Stripe. Marketplace discoverability is the actual win.
3% + STRIPE
OCCASIONAL
Typefully
X scheduling. Clean editor, thread split, cross-post to LinkedIn/Threads/Bluesky.
$19 / mo
OCCASIONAL
AuthoredUp
LinkedIn editor + analytics. Best value at launch tier. Skip Taplio until you're scaling LI seriously.
$20 / mo
OCCASIONAL
05 · DELIBERATELY NOT USING
MONTHLY · $0
n8n
Visual workflow tool. Replaced with Vercel cron + serverless functions — code-first, $0 platform fee, versioned in git, debuggable.
$0–20 / mo
AVOIDED
Make.com
Same as n8n. Fine for non-technical users; wrong fit for an operator who can write a serverless function in 20 minutes.
$9–29 / mo
AVOIDED
Zapier
Even more expensive per-action than the above. The cost-per-workflow at scale doesn't make sense once you can code.
$20+ / mo
AVOIDED