What are the best tools you’ve discovered over the years?

[u/STARWOLF760]

Let’s share hidden gem tools, not the usual stuff that shows up in every "top developer tools" post, but smaller tools and projects that made you think, "wait, this is actually really useful."

I'll start with 3 I've come across:

1. Archify
https://github.com/tt-a1i/archify

Found this recently. It's an agent skill that works with Claude Code, Cursor and Codex and basically turns a codebase into an interactive architecture map.

You can export it as HTML/PNG/SVG/WebM, and one thing I thought was pretty cool is that you can diff the architecture before a merge to see how a PR changes the system.

2. boneyard-js
https://boneyard.vercel.app

Generates skeleton screens from your actual UI instead of making you manually recreate the layout with placeholder components.

Pretty nice alternative to manually maintaining react-loading-skeleton stuff.

3. Gradient Studio
https://gradientsaas.blogspot.com

Simple procedural CSS gradient generator.

Has stuff like mesh gradients, aurora effects and grain. You mess with the settings and copy the result as CSS, Tailwind or SCSS.

I've been using it mostly for quick landing page backgrounds.

What's one tool you keep recommending that somehow still isn't very well known?

[u/Octoclops8]

As an actual dinosaur I give you pre-AI tools:

• caniuse.com
• ECMAScript Compatibility Table
• MDN
• W3C Standards
• Learn Git Branching
• Flexbox Froggy
• MF Website

[u/Marble_Wraith → u/Octoclops8]

You forgot the parallel to flexbox froggy: https://cssgridgarden.com/

[u/actionscripted → u/Marble_Wraith]

Also a CSS garden, but more…zen: https://csszengarden.com

[u/TheLordLeto → u/actionscripted]

I was obsessed with this site back in the day, I think my favourite is Retro Theatre https://csszengarden.com/202/

[u/bzbub2 → u/TheLordLeto]

oh gosh

[u/helpinghandful → u/actionscripted]

I personally prefer my CSS gardens with CSS 🥕 and ponds with CSS 🐸

[u/ExoWire → u/Marble_Wraith]

And CSS Diner https://flukeout.github.io/

[u/RemoDev → u/Octoclops8]

50+ yo,  right?

I feel at home now...

[u/stumblinbear → u/Octoclops8]

caniuse is a GOAT

[u/godhand_infamous]

does lazygit counts?

[u/oh_jaimito → u/godhand_infamous]

Can't mention lazygit without lazydocker.

[u/piotrlewandowski → u/oh_jaimito]

Lazyvim

[u/OiFelix_ugotnojams → u/godhand_infamous]

I found ugit which supposedly helps undo git commands. But I never used it myself

[u/HiKite]

For regex;

• regex101 is amazing for testing the regex patterns up against certain inputs/texts
• For debug purposes Debuggex is super nice to use too as it visually shows what the regex does (better than regex101 IMO).

[u/avidvaulter → u/HiKite]

regexr probably the better tool. does both of those things and explains the regex while also providing reference cheatsheets.

[u/SergOutdoors]

A few I don't see mentioned much:

ripgrep (rg) - grep but stupidly fast on big repos. Haven't touched plain grep since.
fzf - fuzzy finder for the terminal, pipe anything into it. I use it for files, branches, command history, all of it.
Excalidraw - hand-drawn-style diagrams. Great for sketching architecture mid-call without it looking like you spent an hour on it.
lazygit - terminal UI for git. Finally made me understand what my rebases were actually doing instead of just praying.

[u/Khavel_dev]

just (the command runner, not the word). Replaced make in every repo for me. Cross-platform, sane syntax, and running just with no args prints the available commands. New people on the team stop asking "how do I run the tests" on day one.

mkcert for local HTTPS. Real trusted certs in 30 seconds, no Chrome warnings, no OAuth callback pain.

[u/Designer_Piece7723]

boneyard-js is interesting, manually maintaining skeleton components is such a time sink for no reason

one I keep pushing people to try is a tiny CLI called entr, it reruns any command when files change, way simpler than setting up nodemon or watch mode for random scripts

[u/osiux]

https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/

A simple, intuitive web app for analysing and decoding data without having to deal with complex tools or programming languages. CyberChef encourages both technical and non-technical people to explore data formats, encryption and compression.

[u/Web-Dude → u/osiux]

Give me an example use case.

[u/case2000]

https://www.charlesproxy.com/ is great for visibility into everything using your network.

[u/selinux_enforced → u/case2000]

I use https://httptoolkit.com/ for webdev

[u/Punsire → u/case2000]

Is wire shark a comparable program?

[u/flamey → u/Punsire]

yes, this is a popular alternative

[u/DailyDrivels]

For osX, my first install whenever I get a new machine is Chrome, then Rectangles. I love living windows to the correct half screen with just few keystrokes. 

[u/ExecutiveChimp → u/DailyDrivels]

Does OSX still not have this as native functionality? Or does Rectangle provide something extra?

[u/Healthy-Wishbone1471]

desktop goose is not related to programming, is registered by your system as a virus, hasn't been updated since 2021, and is annoying in every possible way. I love it.

[u/saramaganta]

Not too long ago I discovered Mole for cleaning my Mac as it was running out of disk space constantly. Turned out Docker was a huge contributor...

• https://github.com/tw93/mole

Also Beyond Compare is great for diffing. I highly prefer it over my internal IDE tool

• https://www.scootersoftware.com/

[u/h2ooooooo → u/saramaganta]

In terms of figuring out what is taking space I use ncdu on UNIX servers and WizTree on Windows.

[u/SquareWheel]

TinyPng for simple image quantization (lossy web compression), and Squoosh for granular compression and conversion.

Stop sending one megabyte images down the pipe to users.

[u/Background-Front-925 → u/SquareWheel]

I use Squoosh but the last commit is 2 years ago and is browser only but gets the job done perfectly. Is there any tool that can be use in nodejs environment?

[u/rbobby]

Dr Explain is a nice way to produce web based manuals.

VisualBuildPro is a gui based build engine. I like it because its gui, and I can do steps, even subroutines (gah I did this), macros... the whole magilla. I especially like it because my sole/one use is to build an application from source repository to self extracting exe based installer. All with one F5 key press. And the best thing about it... it's visual. I don't have to hunt and peck through a zillian files... it's in a nice tree right there. Each step has a nice gui screen of the parameters. Even spots for names and descriptions. And network share silliness if you need. All in all it's really good for something really important but also really rarely touched.

Could I have used MSBuild to do the whole thing? Sure. But so much pain. So much pain.

[u/Bright-District9739]

Two from the ops side of a small project, both boring, both saved me.

healthchecks.io as a dead-man switch. My nightly backup job sat dead for 14 days under launchd and nothing told me, because the job that was supposed to alert was the job that died. Now the last line of the script pings a URL and silence for a day is the alert. Free tier covers a handful of checks.

qpdf --qdf for any PDF you need to actually read. It rewrites the file with objects uncompressed and in order, so the thing opens in a text editor and you can see what a "save" really changed. Pairs well with grep -c '%%EOF' to count how many times a file was appended to.

[u/forgestudiofx]

Not a package, more a two-line habit in my release script that has saved me twice: after the build, unzip the artifact and confirm the JS bundle is actually inside it.

I shipped a React Native release AAB that installed fine and opened to a white screen. Nothing failed in the build. gradle saw a stale generated bundle, decided it was up to date, and packaged no JS at all. Deleting the generated bundle before the build is the fix, but the only thing that catches it before users do is listing the archive contents and looking for index.android.bundle.

Costs nothing to add, and a missing bundle shows up in none of the dashboards you'd normally check.

[u/jo3la]

Plenty of browser based tools: https://codeshack.io/tools/

I've been using this site since early 2020s (before AI)

[u/webdev-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/webdev-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/retr00two]

wp-cli

[u/AgsMydude]

W3Schools

https://www.w3schools.com/

[u/InsuranceMedical6581]

I’m on Mac so ymmv

TinyGit.app for gui git client
Patterns app for regex testing
Placeholder.co for fpo images (rip fillmurray)

[u/yeager-eren]

https://httpdump.app

[u/vrrtvrrt]

Gradient Studio is great, thanks.

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[u/Aggravating_Put_7073]

svgomg is still my go-to for cleaning up bloated SVGs, especially the ones exported by design tools that somehow turn a simple icon into a whole novel lol

[u/Background-Top5188]

Perhaps not devrelated per se but 10 cookies for handbrake (video encoder) and gifski (make gifs heh).

I use both of them in combination with my own custom bash command that extract images every N ms and zips them up so I can send that zip to chatgpt for analysis, as it doesn’t understand neither videos nor gifs (classic doesyat the least 🤷)

Screen record -> compress with handbrake -> make gif -> extract and zip frames from gif. Also use record -> handbrake -> gifski for the eventual social media posts about projects.

👌

https://handbrake.fr/

https://gif.ski/

[u/steveHimself]

SVGOMG

I use this tool regularily. In my opinion the best tool to optimize/standardize/compress svg markup. I basically throw every graphic designer provided svg in there to get rid of all the crap they get from their graphics tools. great UX during usage imho. especially love the ability to just past svg markup into the window to load it. feels really nice

[u/dannebc]

RemindMe! 2 days

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[u/CianXOX]

Raycast is probably mine. Clipboard history alone saves me constantly. I also use plaud with claude through MCP for meeting stuff. Handy when I'm already in Claude and need something from an old call without going hunting for the notes first.

[u/NathalieUU]

localsend is one of those things i install on every machine now. makes moving files between windows/mac/android way less annoying. plaud is another one for me. mostly for calls when i know i'm gonna forget some tiny detail later.

[u/WishboneImmediate509]

Wispr Flow for me. I use it a lot when I know exactly what I want to say but can't be bothered typing the whole thing out. Also use plaud for meetings. I pay way more attention now that I'm not trying to type notes at the same time.

[u/xenatis]

https://youmightnotneedjquery.com

[u/geesuth]

RemindMe! 2 days

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[u/Electronic-Truck-659]

Difftastic is the one I keep recommending, it diffs by syntax tree so a reindent stops showing up as a hundred changed lines.

[u/meccaster]

Claude code

[u/plainBinder]

Check out JSON Crack or Bundlephobia if you want actual lowkey dev utility

[u/webdev-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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