The year 2026 is approaching, and it is important to prepare carefully for it.
Our productivity is influenced by many factors and the right tools can significantly improve it. Due to the rapid development of LLM and artificial intelligence in general, it is more important than ever to be aware of modern tools in the new year.
In this article, I will talk about seven developer tools that will help you work smarter, save time, and create and develop your products faster.
Well, let's get started! 🏎️
1. 🐜 HMPL - Fetch HTML, render it safely, and keep apps dynamic, modern, and small
First on the list is a small tool that will allow you to create applications that are much smaller in size than if you were to do so using popular frameworks.
This will significantly reduce the time spent on application development and speed up your website creation productivity literally several times over.
2. 🔎 Dify - Production-ready platform for agentic workflow development
Dify is a popular platform for building AI applications based on large language models. It allows developers to quickly launch chatbots, assistants, and other intelligent services without having to write the entire infrastructure from scratch. It can be used in both cloud solutions and on-premises servers.
The platform combines tools for working with prompts, data management, API integration, and application monitoring, allowing you to quickly and easily create modern technological solutions for your projects.
3. 🪨 Obsidian - Note-taking app for creating and linking plain text notes
Next on the list, I couldn’t help but include a note app, since it has been proven not just for years, but for decades, that using such notes, you can completely organize your process in time, at least as much as possible :)
I deliberately didn't include other apps from my notes, as I believe Obsidian is the most powerful of them all. I've also been using it for six months now and thought I'd share my experience with you in this article.
4. ▶️ Cursor - The AI Code Editor
I couldn't help but include this app on the list because it's as useful as you can imagine when writing code. You probably already know all about it, but just in case, I'll tell you it's a text editor with an AI agent.
In other words, you literally just write what the app does, and it writes the code for you. All you have to do is review the result and make adjustments where it seems easier to write the code yourself, and that's it. This speeds up the development of any app by a factor of hundreds, if not more.
5. 🎙️ Raycast - A collection of powerful productivity tools all within an extendable launcher
The next tool is a very useful application that will allow you to manage your macOS computer much more efficiently than you could on the default one.
Keyboard task automation, application management, script execution, and much more, also extensible with extensions and artificial intelligence, will allow you to adapt your workflow to excellent productivity.
6. ⚙️ Motia - Code-First Backend Framework for APIs & AI Agents
This tool allows you to create APIs using a clear and futuristic interface. It's fully integrated with Express.js, so you don't have to worry about popular plugins or other issues.
npx motia@latest create
This tool is ideal for backend developers, as it provides visualization of the server request process, a convenient time counter, diagrams, and much more, allowing you to create APIs with a minimum of bugs.
7. 📈 Linear - Plan and build products
Next up is Linear, a task and development management tool designed specifically for product and engineering teams. It combines issue tracking, roadmapping, and much more in a single, minimalist interface.
It allows managers to significantly increase their own and their team's productivity through effective visibility into project status.
8. 📌 Task - A task runner
Task Runner for developers allows you to describe commands and workflows in a single Taskfile.yml file, making build, testing, and deployment automation more readable and predictable.
Now, seriously, this is a real tool that improves workflows by literally describing them in a separate file. Deployment, tests, and more—you can describe all of this in a single file, eliminating the need to repeat the same actions manually.
✅ Conclusion
In my opinion, all these tools can significantly improve the productivity of both an individual developer and the team as a whole. Moreover, they all affect different areas of not only programming, but also management in general. In the new year 2026, they will help you make better products.
Thank you for reading this article!
Top comments (3)
Happy New Year!
You too!
Happy New Year 2026 to all! I hope you enjoy this list!