Six months ago, if you asked me how I managed my side projects, I'd have said "Finder folders."
Notion? Too heavy. GitHub? Great for code, bad for remembering what's what. VS Code recent files? Only shows what I touched this week.
So I used Finder. I had a ~/code folder, with subfolders for different types of projects. It worked fine when I had 5 projects.
Then AI coding tools happened. And suddenly I had 40.
The First Problem: Finding Anything Took Forever
Here's what my workflow looked like:
I'd remember — "wait, I built that thing that does X, where did I put it?"
Then:
- Open Finder
- Click into
~/code - Guess which folder it's in —
experiments?apps?playground? - Open the folder, see 15 sub-folders with names I barely remember
- Click into one, see it's a monorepo with 3 projects inside
- Open the wrong one — it's the mobile app, not the web app
- Go back, try another
- Finally find it. What was I doing again?
This wasn't a "once a week" annoyance. It was multiple times a day. And the worst part? Sometimes I'd give up looking and just start building it again. I've rebuilt the same small utility tool three times now because I couldn't find the previous versions.
The real problem wasn't just finding the folder. It was remembering what was inside each folder. Is this the React version or the Next.js version? Is this project Python or Go? Did I set up a backend for this one yet?
I needed a way to see, at a glance, what every project was — without opening it.
What I built for this: Automatic tech stack detection. Drop a folder in, and it tells you — Next.js? FastAPI? Rust? iOS project? — with an icon so you can scan 40 projects in 2 seconds. Currently detects 29 frameworks across mobile, web, backend, and desktop.
It sounds simple. But when you're staring at a list of 40 projects and trying to remember which one had that thing you built... being able to see "oh right, that was the FastAPI one" saves minutes every single time.
The Second Problem: "How Do I Run This Again?"
Here's a thing nobody warns you about with AI coding: you start building tools in languages you don't really know.
I'm primarily a mobile and web developer. But with Cursor and Claude Code? I've built Python scripts, Rust CLIs, Go APIs — things I'd never have attempted before because the setup friction was too high.
AI handles all the boilerplate. It writes the code. It works. Great!
But then a week later, I want to run it again. And I have no idea how.
I'd find the project folder, stare at it, and think... is it python main.py? python app.py? Do I need to activate a venv first? What was the command again?
Half the time I'd just ask Claude again: "how do I run this project?" And it would tell me the same one-line command it told me last week. And the week before that.
This is such a stupid problem. The answer is always one line. But I can never remember which line.
What I built for this: Double-click to run.
Double-click any project, and it automatically detects the right start command and runs it in Terminal. npm run dev for Next.js, python main.py for Python projects, cargo run for Rust, docker compose up for Docker projects. You can also set a custom command per project.
It's not a flashy feature. It's not going to impress anyone on Hacker News. But it saves me from asking AI "how do I run this?" at least once a day.
The Third Problem: "What Was I Going to Do With This One?"
You know that feeling? You open a project you haven't touched in three weeks, and you think... why did I even build this? And what was I going to add next?
Before AI, I had 3-5 projects and I knew everything about each one. I knew the bugs, I knew the roadmap, I knew what I was doing when I stopped.
At 40+ projects? Forget it. I can barely remember what half of them do, let alone what I was planning to change.
I tried putting todos in Notion. Too much friction — by the time I navigate to the right page, I've forgotten the idea.
I tried putting README notes in each project. Nobody reads READMEs, not even the person who wrote them.
I tried Apple Notes. 20 notes later, I can't find which note goes with which project.
What I built for this: Project-level todos.
Every project in Dev WorkDir has its own tiny todo list. Not a full project management system — just a quick list for the stuff you need to remember.
- "Fix the loading state bug"
- "Try the new animation library"
- "Add dark mode toggle"
- "Refactor auth — it's messy"
When I get an idea for a project while I'm working on something else? Two clicks to switch to that project, type the todo, two clicks back. Total time: 5 seconds.
It's not for big planning. It's for the "I'll get to this later" stuff that would otherwise get lost forever.
Why a Menu Bar App?
I tried building this as a regular app first. Didn't work.
The problem with a regular app is that it's another thing to switch to. You're in your editor, you need to find a project, you cmd-tab over... and by the time you get there, you've lost your train of thought.
A menu bar app is different. It's always there. One click, you see your projects, find what you need, one click to open in your editor, and you're back to coding. No app switch, no dock clutter, no context loss.
When you're in the flow — in that vibe coding state — the last thing you want is to break your concentration just to find a folder.
Some Things I Learned
Building this tool for myself, then sharing it, taught me a few things:
1. The bottleneck has shifted. It used to be "how fast can I build this?" Now it's "how fast can I find what I built and remember what I was doing?" Creation is cheap. Context is expensive.
2. Small tools beat big systems. The best productivity tools for the AI era aren't complex project management suites. They're tiny, focused things that remove one specific friction point. Double-click to run is my favorite feature and it's probably the simplest one.
3. Developers care about privacy. I built Dev WorkDir as a 100% local app — no cloud, no account, no tracking. I thought this was a "nice to have." Turns out it's the thing people comment on most.
Where I'm At
Dev WorkDir lives in my menu bar, every single day. I use it more than I thought I would. It's become the first thing I open when I sit down to code — a quick scan of what's there, pick something, double-click, start coding.
If you're also someone whose project list exploded after AI coding tools, you might find it useful too. It's a macOS menu bar app, free on the App Store.
Dev WorkDir — macOS menu bar project manager
What about you? How do you manage a growing pile of side projects? Any weird little productivity hacks I should know about?
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