DEV Community: Vishva Variya

7 AI Tools I Use Every Day as a Mac Developer

Vishva Variya — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 20:34:53 +0000

No hype list. Seven tools, seven real jobs, and the ones I deleted.

Last Tuesday I counted. Before 10 in the morning I had already opened seven different AI tools. Not because I was testing them. Because each one had one job, and I needed all seven done before lunch.

You don't find one magic app. You end up with a small shelf of them, each doing one thing well, each annoying you in its own way. I deleted more than I kept. These seven survived.

These will help you:

Write boring code without writing it yourself
Turn a cryptic error message into plain English
Ask AI something without opening a browser tab
Never write meeting notes again
Fix screenshots and app images in minutes
Catch the dumb bug before a human reviews your code
Know when your AI tools are about to cut you off

1. Claude Code — the one that writes the boring code

If I could only keep one AI tool, it would be this one. It lives in my terminal and does the work I used to put off for weeks.

The job: refactoring, bug hunts, and the boring migrations nobody wants. Last month I had to move a chunk of Notchy's settings code from one pattern to another. Forty-something files, same change, different details each time. I would have put it off for a month. I gave it to Claude Code on a Friday afternoon and it was done before dinner, tests passing. I checked every file. That's the rule.

What it saved me: two days of dull work, done in three hours including my review.

What it gets wrong: it is confident when it shouldn't be. It will rewrite a function, break an edge case, and describe the change like it did me a favour. On a big repo it eats context fast, and once that's gone it starts guessing. I keep tasks small now. One job per session.

Price: no free tier. It comes with a Claude Pro plan at $20 a month, or Max if you need more, or you pay per token with an API key. I pay for Pro. Check the link for the current plans, because Anthropic keeps moving them.

Checkout here: https://claude.com/product/claude-code

Privacy: your code goes to Anthropic's servers. That's the deal with all of these. If your code can't leave your machine, this isn't your tool.

2. ChatGPT — the fastest way to understand an error

Not for writing code. For the moment a compiler or a crash log says something you don't understand, and you need it in plain English in ten seconds.

The job: error messages, docs I don't want to read, and first drafts of release notes. Last week a build failed with a signing error I'd never seen. I pasted it in, and it told me the provisioning profile had expired. Five seconds. It would have taken me half an hour of forums.

What it saved me: maybe twenty minutes a day, on the small questions.

What it gets wrong: it invents APIs. It will tell you a function exists, with full confidence, and it does not exist. I caught it twice in one week, both times a second from pasting the code in unchecked. Now I treat everything it says about code like a rumour. Good starting point. Never the final word.

Price: free plan exists, and it's fine for quick questions. Plus is $20 a month, and that's what I pay for, mostly for the higher limits and the better model.

Checkout here: https://chatgpt.com

Privacy: what you paste goes to OpenAI's servers. Don't paste secrets, keys, or customer data. I have a rule: if I wouldn't put it in a Slack message, it doesn't go in the chat box.

3. Raycast AI — AI without opening a tab

The one I reach for a dozen times a day without thinking. It lives in the launcher, so asking AI something costs one keystroke, not a context switch.

The job: quick rewrites, quick summaries, quick answers. I highlight a sentence in an email, hit a shortcut, and ask it to make the sentence shorter. I paste a long error log and ask for the one line that matters. Small jobs, done where I already am.

What it saved me: fifty tiny saves. I open a browser for AI questions twice a day now instead of twenty.

What it gets wrong: 500 AI credits a month on Pro, and some questions eat more than you'd expect. I've run out twice, both times near the end of the month, both times on a day I needed it. And the free plan has no AI at all, which is a shame, because the free launcher is great.

Price: free plan, no AI. Pro is $10 a month, or $8 a month if you pay yearly. That's the plan I'm on.

Checkout here: https://www.raycast.com

Privacy: your prompts go to the AI provider you pick. Raycast lets you bring your own key, which I like, because then at least I know whose servers are involved.

4. Granola — the meeting notes I never write

It listens to the call, I type my own rough notes, and afterwards it turns both into a summary I can actually send someone.

The job: meetings. I used to leave calls and spend ten minutes writing down what was decided, and still forget half of it by the next day. Now I type two or three messy lines during the call, and when it's over there's a clean summary with the decisions and the action items.

What it saved me: about an hour a week, plus no more guessing what we agreed on Tuesday.

What it gets wrong: names and numbers. It will turn "Vishva" into something creative, and it once turned a version number into a date. I always read the summary before I send it. Also, it records the meeting. I tell people it's on, every time. If someone isn't comfortable, I turn it off. No summary is worth that awkwardness.

Price: free to start, with a free tier. Paid plans exist for teams. Check the link.

Checkout here: https://www.granola.ai

Privacy: this one records audio, so read the privacy page before you use it for work calls. It doesn't join as a bot, which I prefer. It listens on your own Mac.

5. Pixelmator Pro — screenshots and app images, fixed in minutes

Not a chatbot. An image editor with machine learning tools that do the one job I actually need: make a screenshot look like it belongs on a website.

The job: app screenshots, store images, the odd background removal. When I need a clean image of Notchy for a listing, I open Pixelmator Pro, remove the background, upscale it if it's too small, and I'm done. The ML Super Resolution has saved images I thought were unusable.

What it saved me: thirty seconds instead of an upload-wait-download loop, three or four times a week.

What it gets wrong: it's an editor, not a magic wand. Background removal struggles with hair and thin lines, and the repair tool sometimes invents texture. And Apple keeps moving it around. It's part of Apple Creator Studio now, a subscription, but the one-time Mac App Store version still exists. Check which one you're buying.

Price: $49.99 one-time on the Mac App Store. No subscription, for that version.

Checkout here: https://www.pixelmator.com

Privacy: runs on your Mac, nothing uploaded. The ML tools run locally. That's the whole reason I picked it over a web tool.

6. CodeRabbit — a second pair of eyes on every pull request

It reviews my pull requests before a human does, and it catches the bugs I'm too close to see.

The job: code review. I open a PR, and within minutes there's a review with line-by-line comments. It catches the null check I forgot, the API call I left in a loop, the test that doesn't actually test anything. It caught a real bug last month, a race condition in a settings sync, that I would have shipped. That one catch paid for the whole year.

What it saved me: review time. My own pass is shorter, and it reviews at 2 in the morning.

What it gets wrong: false positives. About a third of its comments are things I disagree with or don't care about. You have to triage. Accept everything it says and your code gets worse, not better. It's a junior reviewer with infinite patience. Treat it like one.

Price: free forever on public open-source repos. Private repos need a paid plan, with a 14-day trial. Check the link for the current price.

Checkout here: https://coderabbit.ai

Privacy: your code goes to their servers for review, through OpenAI and Anthropic models. Read the privacy page. For my public repos it's fine. For anything private and sensitive, think first.

7. Notchy — the notch that watches my AI usage

The AI-usage tracker in the notch, so I know when Claude Code is about to cut me off before it actually does.

Full disclosure, I built this one.

The job: watching rate limits. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot. They all have usage windows, and they all cut you off mid-task if you don't notice. Notchy shows the rate-limit windows, tokens, and cost right on the notch, and warns me before I hit a limit. Last week it told me I had twenty minutes left in a Claude window, and I wrapped up instead of starting something new and getting cut off halfway.

What it saved me: the mid-task cutoff, about once a week.

What it gets wrong: setup took longer than it should have. I built the thing and I still had to read my own docs. Use more than one provider and the notch gets busy. I show the two I use and hide the rest.

Price: €14.99 one-time until Nov 30, 2026, then €24.99. 7-day free trial, no card.

Checkout here: https://notchy.dev

Privacy: runs on your Mac, nothing uploaded. API keys stay in the Keychain.

The one I deleted

I tried an AI writing app that promised my release notes, tweets, and Medium drafts in my voice. Four days. Everything sounded like a press release by someone who had never used a Mac. I spent more time fixing its sentences than writing them.

That was the lesson. The tools on this list do one concrete job. They don't pretend to be me. The moment an AI tool tries to sound human, I can tell, and so can everyone else. Deleted, not missed.

The takeaway

Seven tools, seven jobs, none of them magic. Let the AI do the repetitive part, keep the judgement for yourself, and check its work every single time. The day you stop checking is the day it ships a bug with your name on it.

Which of these are you already using, and which one did you delete? Tell me the one that disappointed you. I read every reply.

I'm Vishva. I make Notchy, a Dynamic Island for your Mac, and Peekaboo, a Finder alternative for finding files in plain English. I write about Mac apps and AI tools that actually save time. Follow if you want the next list.

5 Claude Skills That Do the Boring Work in My Indie Business

Vishva Variya — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 20:29:22 +0000

I tried 30. Five stayed. Here's what each one actually does, and the exact command to install it.

I pay for Claude every month, and for the first month I mostly used it like a smarter autocomplete. Then a friend showed me one skill that wrote my App Store screenshots in ten minutes. A job that used to eat my afternoon.

I went looking for more, and I tried about 30 of them. Most of them were just a prompt with a fancy name. Five stayed. Here's what each one actually does, what I used it for, and the exact command to install it.

These will help you:

Write App Store screenshots without losing an afternoon
Review your own code before anyone else has to
Test a feature in a real browser, not just in your head
Turn a messy PDF into something you can actually use
Build a simple page without starting from a blank file

A quick note before we start. A Claude skill is a saved set of instructions Claude follows for one job. You install it once, then you call it by name. If a skill saves you less time than it takes to install it, delete it. I deleted 25 of them for exactly that reason.

1. The screenshots skill

A skill that writes App Store screenshots from your app, in your words, in ten minutes.

I used to spend a whole afternoon on screenshots. Open the app, take the shot, write the line, rewrite the line, ask a friend, rewrite it again. It was the most boring part of a launch, and it mattered, because it's the first thing anyone sees.

Now I give Claude the app, the features, and the tone I want, and it drafts all of them. I still edit every line, because it's my app and I know what it does better than a model does. But editing ten drafts takes ten minutes. Writing them from nothing took an afternoon.

The job I gave it last: the Peekaboo launch screenshots. It wrote the first draft, I changed about half the words, and we shipped that day. Before, that job would have eaten my whole afternoon.

Install it: in Claude Code, run /plugin install frontend-design@claude-plugins-official. Then tell Claude what your app does, in plain English, and ask for the screenshots.

How it pays: one afternoon back, every launch. I launch a lot, so that adds up fast.

Price: free, if you already pay for Claude. No extra charge for the skill itself.

Privacy: runs in your Claude session. Don't paste secrets into it, obviously. I never paste API keys or passwords into any skill.

2. The code review skill

A skill that reviews your code like a grumpy teammate, before a real teammate has to.

I write code alone most days. There's nobody to catch the stupid mistake. I once shipped a bug where a button did nothing, because I'd renamed the function and forgotten the button. It sat there for a week. A user found it, not me.

Now I run a review skill before I commit anything big. It reads the change, tells me what's wrong, and I fix it before anyone sees it. It catches the renamed-function mistake every time. It also catches the ones I didn't think of, like a timer that never stops, or a file that never gets closed.

The job I gave it last: a Notchy change to the timer view. It flagged a timer that kept running after the window closed. I would have shipped that. It would have drained battery for a week.

Install it: in Claude Code, run /plugin install code-review@claude-plugins-official. Then ask Claude to review your change before you commit.

How it pays: one bug not shipped is worth more than an hour saved. A bug in production costs me support replies, a fix, and a release. A review costs me five minutes.

Price: free, if you already pay for Claude.

Privacy: runs in your Claude session. Your code stays in your session, don't paste anything you wouldn't show a teammate.

3. The browser test skill

A skill that opens your feature in a real browser and clicks it, so you don't have to pretend you tested it.

I used to "test" a feature by looking at the code and thinking, "Yeah, that should work." Then a user would click the button and nothing would happen, because I'd never actually clicked it myself.

This skill opens a browser, goes to the page, clicks the button, and tells me what happened. It takes a screenshot when it breaks, so I can see it. It's the closest thing I have to a teammate who actually uses the app.

The job I gave it last: the Peekaboo cleanup view. It clicked Trash, then Undo, then Trash again, and found a case where Undo didn't bring back the right file. I fixed it before anyone else saw it.

Install it: Playwright is an MCP server, not a plugin, so there is no playwright plugin to install. In Claude Code, run claude mcp add playwright npx @playwright/mcp@latest. Then ask Claude to open your page and test the feature, step by step.

How it pays: one real test beats ten "that should work"s. It saves me the support reply, the apology, and the hotfix.

Price: free, if you already pay for Claude. Playwright itself is free and open source.

Privacy: runs on your Mac, in a local browser. Nothing uploaded, except what you tell it to open.

4. The PDF skill

A skill that reads a PDF and gives you back the parts that matter, without you reading 40 pages.

I get PDFs all the time. Invoices, reports, terms, a 40-page thing someone sent me that I need three numbers from. I used to read the whole thing, or worse, not read it at all and hope the numbers didn't matter.

This skill reads the PDF, pulls out the tables and the numbers, and tells me what changed. I still check the numbers, because I don't trust a model with money. But I check three numbers now, not 40 pages.

The job I gave it last: a monthly report from a payment provider. It pulled out the total, the fees, and the one charge I didn't recognise. That charge was a mistake, and I got it back.

Install it: no extra install is needed — Claude Code reads PDFs natively. Just give Claude the PDF and ask for the numbers, not a summary.

How it pays: 40 pages down to three numbers. That's an hour back, every month, and one wrong charge caught.

Price: free, if you already pay for Claude.

Privacy: runs in your Claude session. Don't paste a PDF with passwords or private data into it. I check what's in a PDF before I hand it over.

5. The page builder skill — and the watcher I built myself

A skill that builds a simple page from a description, and a notch app that tells me when my AI limit is about to run out.

The fifth one is really two things, because the second one saved me more times than the first.

The page builder: I need a landing page, a pricing page, a changelog. I used to start from a blank file, which is the worst place to start anything. Now I describe the page, Claude builds the first draft, and I edit it. It's not beautiful on the first try. It's a start, and a start is the hard part.

Install it: in Claude Code, run /plugin install frontend-design@claude-plugins-official. Then describe the page you want, in plain English, and ask for the first draft.

Now the watcher, because this one is mine.

Notchy shows my AI usage from the notch, so a long Claude session doesn't die halfway through a refactor.

Full disclosure, I built this one.

You're deep in a refactor, the agent is halfway through, and then: limit reached. See you in a few hours. That happened to me twice, and the second time I was so angry I built the fix into Notchy instead of just complaining about it.

Notchy has an AI usage view. I check it before I start anything big, not after it runs out. It sits in the notch, next to Now Playing and my timers, so I see it without opening anything. If I'm at 80% and the job is big, I do the small job first, or I wait. That's it. No drama, no dead session.

Try it today: check your usage before your next long session, not after it runs out. Done when you know the number before you start, not when Claude tells you it's over.

Price: €14.99 one-time until Nov 30, then €24.99. 7-day free trial. No subscription.

System requirements: MacBook with a notch, macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon.

Checkout here: https://notchy.dev

Privacy: runs on your Mac, nothing uploaded. No account needed for the trial.

The two habits that cost nothing

Two things I do with every skill, and they cost nothing.

First, a short prompt. Tell Claude what the job is, in one sentence, and what "done" looks like. "Write the screenshots, five of them, in my voice, and stop when they're ready to edit." If you don't say what done looks like, it will keep going forever.

Second, a five-minute review. Before I trust a skill's output, I read it. All of it. A skill that saves you an hour and ships a mistake costs you a day. I learned that the hard way, with a pricing page that had the wrong price on it for a week.

The takeaway

I've made a good amount of money using Claude skills. Some of it directly, some of it because a skill saved me hours that I then spent on stuff that actually pays. The five above are the ones that stayed, out of 30 I tried. The other 25 are deleted, and I don't miss them.

Install one skill today, not five. Tell me which one, and what job you gave it. If it wasted your time, tell me that too.

Which one are you installing first? Tell me in the comments. I read every reply.

I'm Vishva. I make Notchy, a Dynamic Island for your Mac, and Peekaboo, a Mac app for finding files in plain English and freeing space with undo. I write about Mac apps and AI tools that actually save time. Follow if you want the next list.

15 Mac Finder Shortcuts That Save Hours (Cheat Sheet)

Vishva Variya — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 20:23:48 +0000

I used to think I was fast in Finder. Then I timed myself.

I used to think I was fast in Finder.

Then I watched a friend clean up a messy Downloads folder in about 20 seconds without touching her mouse. No dragging. No right-click menus. Just keys. I sat there feeling very slow.

I timed myself after that. I was losing minutes every day to things Finder can do in one keystroke. Minutes, every day, for years. That adds up to something stupid.

Here are the 15 I actually use now. Not the full list from Apple's support page, just the ones I kept. Learn five today, the rest will follow when you're ready. I still forget half of them some weeks.

The ones that move you around

Cmd + Shift + G — Go to Folder. Type ~/Downloads or /Applications and you're there. This alone replaces most of my clicking.
Cmd + Shift + H — Home. Cmd + Shift + D — Desktop. Cmd + Shift + O — Documents. Three keys, three places I live in.
Cmd + [ and Cmd + ] — Back and forward, like a browser. I use this more than I expected.
Cmd + Up Arrow — Go to the enclosing folder. Cmd + Down Arrow — Open the selected item. No double-clicking.

The ones that change how you see files

Cmd + 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 — Icon, List, Column, Gallery view. Column view (Cmd + 3) is the one I live in when I'm hunting for a file.
Cmd + J — View Options. Sort by date, size, kind. Set it once per folder and Finder remembers.
Cmd + Shift + . — Show hidden files. Useful the moment you need to see ~/Library.
Space — Quick Look. Preview a PDF, image or video without opening anything. Space again to close it.

The ones that do the work

Cmd + C, then Option + Cmd + V — Move, don't copy. Most people copy, paste, then go back and delete the original. This skips the delete step.
Cmd + Shift + N — New Folder. Then type the name and hit Enter. No right-click.
Cmd + Delete — Move to Trash. Cmd + Shift + Delete — Empty Trash (it asks first).
Cmd + I — Get Info. Cmd + Option + I — Get Info for everything selected, in one window.
Cmd + F — Search this folder. Add criteria with the + button: kind is PDF, date is this week.
Cmd + A, then Cmd + Click — Select all, then deselect the one file you don't want. Faster than Shift-clicking a long list.
Cmd + Shift + 4, then Space — Screenshot a window, cleanly, with its shadow. The one I use for every screenshot I send anyone.

The shortcut I stopped needing

Here's the honest part. Even with all 15, I still couldn't find files when I couldn't remember their name.

"That invoice from last month." "The screenshot with the blue chart." Finder search wants a name, a date, or a folder. I had none of those. I had a vague memory and a growing headache.

So I built Peekaboo. You type the sentence you'd say out loud, and it turns it into filters you can see and edit. Kind, date range, size, source, folder. Same idea as Cmd + Shift + G, but for the file itself, not the folder.

It also does the cleanup version of this list. Find the big, old, duplicate files and let you Trash them with undo. Undo, because I've deleted the wrong file before and I'm not doing that again.

€9.99 until Nov 13, then €14.99 until Nov 30, then €24.99. Free 14-day trial, no account, nothing uploaded.

Keep this one

Save this article. Try five shortcuts today. Start with Cmd + Shift + G, Space, Cmd + Option + V, Cmd + Shift + ., and Cmd + 3.

If you save an hour this week, tell me which five did it. I'm testing new Mac workflows every week, and the next list comes from what actually worked, not what looked good on paper.

I'm Vishva, an independent Mac developer. I make Peekaboo, a Mac app for finding files in plain English and freeing space with undo, and Notchy, a Dynamic Island for your Mac. Follow for more on making the Mac nicer to live with.

7 Mac Apps That Are So Good, They Feel Illegal to Use in 2026

Vishva Variya — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 20:23:10 +0000

I tried dozens. These seven stayed. Two of them I ended up building myself.

Last Tuesday I counted. I opened Finder 41 times before lunch, and I still couldn't find the invoice I knew I'd saved somewhere.

That's my Mac most days. Not broken, just slow in a hundred small ways. So I started deleting apps that didn't earn their place. If it didn't save me time that same day, it was gone.

Seven survived. Not because they're fancy. Because I kept reaching for them without thinking.

1. Notchy

Apple put a notch on the MacBook and then just left it there. A black rectangle. Doing nothing.

That annoyed me for months. Every time I wanted to change a song or check a timer, I had to go hunting in the menu bar.

So I built Notchy. It turns the notch into a little island, like the iPhone has. Hover over it and it opens up. Music, timers, clipboard, the battery on my phone and headphones, a shelf for files I'm using right now.

I know, I made it, so of course I'd say that. But I use it every day because I got tired of waiting for Apple to do it. It's the first thing I miss when I'm on someone else's Mac.

One-time purchase, free trial. €14.99 until Nov 30, then €24.99.

2. Peekaboo

Finder wants you to remember the file name. I don't. I never have.

Last month I spent 20 minutes looking for a screenshot. I knew what was in it, I knew roughly when I'd taken it, I just couldn't remember what I'd called it. "Screenshot 2026-10-14 at 4.32 PM" tells you nothing.

Peekaboo lets me type what I'd actually say. "The invoice from last month." "That blue chart screenshot." It turns that into filters I can see and change, kind, date, size, folder, and it finds it.

It also shows me what's eating my storage, and it lets me clean it up with undo. That last part matters. I've deleted the wrong thing before. Once was enough.

I built this one too, for the same reason. I was losing files I knew I had.

€9.99 until Nov 13, then €14.99 until Nov 30, then €24.99. Free for 14 days.

3. Raycast

Spotlight is fine until you actually try to do something with it.

Raycast is the one I open fifty times a day. Launch an app, do a quick calculation, pull up something I copied an hour ago. One shortcut, that's it.

The clipboard history is the part I didn't expect to need. I copy a link, then I copy a password, then the link is gone. That used to happen to me three times a week. Now it doesn't.

Try it for a day. If you don't use it by lunch, delete it.

4. CleanShot X

I send screenshots to people all day. Users, friends, anyone helping me debug something.

Before CleanShot, every screenshot meant opening Preview, cropping it, renaming it, finding it on my Desktop later. It was stupid, and I did it for years.

Now I take it, draw a circle around the problem, copy the link, done. No file to clean up after.

If you send screenshots to anyone, this one pays for itself in a week. If you don't, skip it.

5. Rectangle

This one is free, and I almost didn't include it because it's so boring.

It just puts windows where you tell them to go. Left half, right half, full screen. One shortcut.

macOS got better at this, but it still forgets. I have two monitors, three apps open, and I want them in the same place every morning. Rectangle remembers. That's the whole job, and it does it.

6. A clipboard manager, properly

Yes, I already mentioned Raycast's clipboard. I'm mentioning it again because copying is the thing I do most on a Mac, and losing a copy is the most annoying thing that happens to me.

Pick one tool for this and learn its shortcut. Just one. I use Raycast's, but a dedicated one works the same. The point is, you should never lose a copied paragraph because you copied something else after it.

I learned that the hard way, rewriting a reply I'd already written perfectly once.

7. Something to clean up after macOS

Open Storage in System Settings and you'll see a big grey block called System Data. That's macOS telling you it has no idea either.

My Downloads folder had installers in it from a year ago. Old .dmg files, stuff I'd already installed and forgotten. Check there first, then ~/Library/Caches, then the apps you haven't opened in months.

Or let Peekaboo do the same check in one place. That's why I added the cleanup view to it, because I was doing this by hand every few months and hating it.

Don't just delete, though. Trash it first. Wait a week. If nothing breaks, then empty it.

What they all have in common

None of them are exciting. That's the point.

They fix one small annoyance I hit every single day, and they do it so well I forget the annoyance was ever there.

That's my test now. If an app doesn't remove friction I actually feel, it's gone by Friday.

What would you add? Tell me in the responses. I'm testing new Mac apps every week, and the next list is the ones that actually survived on my Mac.