Small tools, big impact
The CLI tools and tiny scripts I built for myself that ended up saving hours every week.
The best tools I use aren't the ones I paid for. They're the ones I built in an afternoon because something was annoying me.
The pattern
Something happens repeatedly. I do it manually three or four times. Then I write a script. The script takes an hour. It saves me five minutes a day. Over a year that's about 30 hours — and the script is still running.
Three that stuck
A changelog formatter. I got tired of writing the same release note structure every week. A short script reads my git log since the last tag, groups commits by prefix, and outputs formatted markdown I can paste directly.
A local screenshot renamer. Screenshots get names like Screenshot 2026-02-27 at 09.41.23.png. A watch script renames them to something I can search for, the moment they land in the folder.
A project switcher. A fuzzy finder over my project directories that opens tmux sessions. Sounds minor — saves about thirty seconds every time I switch contexts, which adds up to something real across a day.
The point
Don't wait for a tool that does exactly what you want. The problem you have is probably specific enough that no existing tool will fit perfectly. Build the small thing. It doesn't need to be general. It doesn't need to be shared. It just needs to work for you.