Tooling should make the work feel lighter. If a tool adds more setup than it saves, it is not a tool yet. It is a hobby.

Start with the problem

Before adding anything to your workflow, write down the friction you are trying to remove. A slow test suite, unclear deployment steps, and inconsistent formatting are real problems. A new note-taking app probably is not.

A small, useful kit

The tools that tend to stick are the ones with narrow jobs: a formatter, a type checker, a fast test runner, and a deployment pipeline that tells the truth. Everything else is optional.

Choose tools that are easy to remove. The fewer lock-ins you collect, the more freedom you keep.