The tools I actually open in 2026
Ignore the stack screenshots. Here's the short, honest list of what survives daily use in a one-person studio — and what quietly got uninstalled.
Marlo Vane
Chronicle Studio
Every January the tool-stack posts bloom: forty apps, twelve subscriptions, a workflow diagram that looks like a subway map. Here's mine instead — the things I opened yesterday, because that's the only endorsement that means anything.
The daily five
- A design tool — for exactly two jobs: moving rectangles until the idea shows up, and handing clients something they can point at. Final decisions happen in the browser.
- A code editor with an agent in it — the single biggest change to my practice in a decade. It writes the boilerplate; I keep the taste.
- A plain-text notes file — one file, one year, searchable. Every fancier system I've tried was a procrastination scheme with sync.
- A time tracker — not for billing theatre, but because pricing improves when you stop lying to yourself about hours.
- Email — the whole CRM. If a relationship can't survive in an inbox, a kanban board won't save it.
What got uninstalled
The whiteboard app nobody else ever joined. The project manager that was really a guilt machine with swimlanes. Three AI image tools that produced the same purple robot. The rule that emerged: if a tool needs a habit built around it, the tool is the problem.
Your stack is not your studio. The work is the studio.
Ask what you'd keep if every subscription doubled in price tomorrow. That list is your actual stack. Mine fits in one hand.
Enjoyed this? There's more where it came from — read the journal or start a project.