My AI-Heavy Indie Stack (Actually Honest Breakdown)

A few weeks ago I posted a thread that ended with "here's the setup, in honest detail:" — and then I didn't deliver the detail.

That was bad form. Let me fix it.

This is the actual stack I use to ship indie projects around a day job, with ADHD eating my executive function most days. It's not impressive. It's just relentless.

The bottleneck isn't what people think

The thing AI changed for me isn't code quality. It's sequencing.

I can think the whole product. I can describe it in three paragraphs. The break in my workflow happened between "I know what I want" and "here are the 40 micro-decisions required to start typing." That gap used to eat days.

With AI handling the sequencing, the gap became minutes. I stopped losing evenings to paralysis.

That's the whole value prop, for me. Everything below is just tooling around that insight.

The stack

Primary driver: Claude Code

Not Cursor, not Copilot. Claude Code in a terminal. Here's why:

• Multi-file edits with intent: "make this template work for a pricing page instead" and it touches 6 files correctly.
• Explains what it changed: I read diffs and actually learn.
• Headless, keyboard-only: which matches how my attention works.

Cursor is great if your brain likes inline completions. Mine doesn't. Copilot is fine if your code is boring; the moment I go off-pattern, it fights me.

The right AI tool is the one that matches your cognitive style, not the one with the best marketing.

The boring glue: bash

About 30% of my time is Claude Code. Another 20% is tiny bash scripts that do things like:

• rename 40 files from post-v1.mdx to post-0001.mdx padded
• download all images from a list, resize, optimize
• grep my notes for every TODO that's older than two weeks

I don't write these scripts. I ask for them. Done in 90 seconds. I don't remember them. I keep a bin/ folder of one-liners I've forgotten writing.

Task memory: sqlite at ~/.local/tasks.db

One table. id, what, status, updated_at. That's it.

When I start a session I run tasks wip and it tells me what I was mid-way through. When I shelve something I run tasks park <what>. It's a 30-line Python script wrapping sqlite3.

This one tool has done more for my shipping velocity than any "productivity app." Because I can't hold state in my head, and a database can.

Surface: dark mode everything, terminal-first

I don't have a strong opinion on editors. I use VS Code because it opens. But the surface I actually work in is the terminal: tmux + a vim split + claude code running in another pane.

Light mode is a tax on my eyes. Coffee is a tax on my ADHD. I optimize around not paying taxes I don't need to pay.

Fuel: tea, not coffee

This isn't a quirky brand — it's a real choice. Caffeine amplifies my ADHD symptoms. Coffee gives me 90 minutes of rocket and then 6 hours of fried circuits.

Tea, specifically black tea with milk, gives me enough alertness without the crash. Three cups a day, stop by 4pm, sleep is protected.

The whole indie workflow collapses if sleep breaks. Everything else is negotiable.

What the stack isn't

It isn't a framework. Nobody else should copy this exactly.

It isn't fast. Anyone watching me work would think I'm slow. I stop constantly to check what I did. I talk to myself out loud. I forget.

It isn't about discipline. Willpower is the first thing to go. The stack exists so willpower isn't in the loop.

It isn't AI doing the work. The AI handles sequencing. I still make every decision that matters — which product to build, what the thing is for, who it's for. That part hasn't gotten cheaper.

What changed

Before: evenings and weekends were a coin flip between "ship something" and "stare at the terminal for 3 hours and give up."

After: evenings and weekends are a coin flip between "ship something" and "ship something smaller." The terminal no longer stares back.

That's it. No 10x, no "unlocked creativity." Just the gap between idea and execution got cheap, and now I can afford to try things.

The part the stack can't do

Distribution.

You can build three templates in a weekend with this setup. Finding anyone who cares about them is a completely different skill, and I'm bad at it. I'm learning. Slowly.

That's tomorrow's post.

Nothing clever. Just relentless reduction of the parts that burn out.