A running list of the gear, software, books, and odds and ends I actually use. The hardware links are Amazon affiliate links — if you buy through one it kicks a small commission my way at no extra cost to you. I only list things I actually run.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Hardware — my desk
Affiliate links (tag: kodyw06-20). A few are current best-seller placeholders I’m still pinning to exact models — I’ll tighten these up.
- Laptop — Apple MacBook Pro 16″ (M5 Max, maxed out) — The whole brainstem runs local on this. Maxed out on purpose: I never want the machine to be the bottleneck between an idea and a running agent.
- Headphones — Apple AirPods Max — My work headset all day. Calls, deep focus, and voice-mode back-and-forth with the twin.
- Monitor — Dell UltraSharp 27″ 4K USB-C — best-seller pick. One cable for power, picture, and dock.
- Keyboard — Logitech MX Keys S — best-seller pick. Quiet, low-profile, types for hours.
- Mouse — Logitech MX Master 3S — best-seller pick. The perennial dev mouse.
- Microphone — Blue Yeti USB Microphone — best-seller pick. Sounds like I showed up.
- Webcam — Microsoft Modern Webcam — 1080p, sharp, and it just works on Teams all day.
- Dock — CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 Dock — best-seller pick. Turns the laptop into the desk.
Software — what I build with
Mostly free or subscriptions, so no affiliate angle here — just the honest stack.
- macOS — Everything I build runs on a Mac. Apple Silicon eats local AI workloads for breakfast.
- Visual Studio Code — Where I live. The brainstem, every agent, and this whole site get written here.
- Claude + Claude Code — The model I trust for the hard reasoning, and the agentic CLI I drive my entire repo with.
- GitHub Copilot — The autocomplete that became a pair programmer — and the auth my local AI stack rides on.
- Python — The language the brainstem and every RAPP agent is written in. Simple enough that the body stays readable.
- GitHub — Every repo, every agent, every draft.
- Obsidian — My second brain. Plain-text notes I actually own, that my agents can read.
- Microsoft 365 + Teams — The day job lives here, and my agents reach right into it.
- Azure — Where the cloud tier of RAPP runs when a brainstem outgrows the laptop.
- WordPress — This blog. Boring, owned, mine.
Books that stuck
- How the Irish Saved Civilization — How a handful of people quietly carried the whole library through the dark. I think about it constantly.
- How to Win Friends and Influence People — Old, plain, and still right about people.
- The Republic — Plato. The original argument about what a good system owes the people inside it.
Still in rotation
- Hardcore History — Dan Carlin makes the past feel like it’s happening to you.
- In Our Time — Melvyn Bragg and three academics, one idea, no fluff.
- Headspace — Ten minutes that make the other sixteen hours work.
- f.lux — Warms the screen at night so my eyes forgive me.
If you want the why behind any of this, that’s what the rest of the blog is for. — Kody · kodyw.com