The Best AI Tools for Developers in 2026 (That I Actually Use)

0:00So pretty much every single day I get asked what AI tools I'm actually using. So in this video, I'm going to show you the exact stack that I'm using in 2026. And I mean the things that are actually on my computer and that are running my videos, my code, my programing projects, and a massive chunk of my business. Now, in order to keep this video easy,

0:18I've separated my tools and kind of this stack into seven different categories. We have agent harnesses, models, editors, or Ides, my development stack, productivity tools, coding frameworks, and then finally AI platforms. Now I have over 20 tools on this list, so stick around and you're probably going to find out about a new one that you might want to start using today.

0:39Let's dive in. So let me start the list with agent harnesses. Now, when I say Agent Harness, I'm talking about the tools that actually run AI models. In a minute I'll get into the actual models that I use. Now the three agent harnesses that I use the following I use Claude code, I use Codex, and I use Hermes or Hermes or whatever you want to say.

0:58Agent. Now I use these three tools for different tasks which I want to get into now. Now Claude code is my daily AI driver. I use this multiple times per day. I have the $200 per month plan and effectively I use this for anything I want to get done quickly because I'm running the desktop app on my computer.

1:15So I ask you questions. I have it analyzed documents, I have it help me script out videos, and I have it do relatively small coding projects for me. I also have all of my MCP servers, all of my connectors, and a whole bank of information about me loaded inside of there. So generally it can answer things and just do the daily tasks very quickly.

1:33Now Codex is the next harness that I use. I don't use this as much as Claude code, because I've just been using Claude Code for a while now, and it's the main thing that I reach for. But I do use it when I need to do more complex development work, and I don't want to dive into all of the code.

1:46I find the Codex is much better at verifying that something actually works. I find the way that it tests the software is better and more complete, and that typically it gives me a higher quality development response. In terms of actually writing code, I don't typically use it for productivity or daily tasks, although it does perform pretty similarly to Claude Code.

2:05Now, the last harness that I have is Hermes agent. Now, this is something that I have spun up on a virtual private server, and I actually have a full agent that handles all of my finances and my accounting. So it's not really related to development at all, but I've created this so that it automatically tracks my emails and records

2:20all of the invoices, receipts and transactions and then uploads that to a dashboard. So I don't use all of these for pure development. In fact, most of these are just for running my life. But those are the three agent harnesses. And previously I've used Open Clod, a bunch of other ones, but I find these are the best,

2:35most user friendly and I can use them across all of my devices. Now the next category to dive into is models. Now this is where there's probably going to be the most amount of backlash and the most amount of debate. But I use a lot of different AI models, and I want to discuss

2:48which ones I use for what, because there's a lot of different use cases. Okay. So the first I'm going to say family of models that I use is from anthropic or the clod models. Okay. So we're talking I guess now opus five, fable five haiku sonnet. Previously I use all of these different models inside

3:05of Claude code and sometimes inside of agent harnesses like Hermes as well. But I'll tell you when I use them, I pretty much only use these models when I'm starting a project from scratch. I want to create something quickly, or I'm just doing like general kind of business productivity, whatever document type work. Now, the reason I use these models, even though they are extremely expensive, is I find that when I'm going from 0 to 1, that these typically perform

3:31well and they're relatively fast to get me to that result. Now, of course, they have a lot of other use cases, is barely scratching the surface, but that's typically when I reach these models something fast, quick 0 to 1, not anything super complicated when it comes to a development perspective. Now, the second family of models I use are from OpenAI.

3:49Okay, so now we're talking about GPT 5.6, soul, Luna, Terra, whatever the new models that they have. And these are what I really reach for for complex development work, especially when I have bugs, when I'm working in larger projects, when there's more context to understand and when something's more complicated, I find these models perform significantly better.

4:07They verify the output better. And typically when I'm going from 1 to 2 or 1 to 1.1, for example, these models outperform the Claude family. So again the Claude or anthropic for me 0 to 1. Then I move over to these models when I really need more advanced reasoning specifically for coding tasks. Not to say they can't do the same thing as Claude, it's just where I use them personally.

4:28Next, we have open source models. Now I like to use open source models when I need to do long running tasks and things that will be quite expensive or rip through my subscription. And personally, right now I am using Kimmie as well as GLM 5.2. I don't use them super frequently, but whenever I know that I'm going to need to do looping tasks or things that are going to rip through the credits,

4:47I will enable them inside of something like Claude Code. Or maybe I'll bring them into a tool like cursor, which we'll talk about later. I find I get really good results. Honestly, one of the main reasons I prefer to use the other models is just because everything's already set up in their software, and the benefit that I get from using the open source models really

5:03doesn't outweigh the cost of having to change over all of the settings or set them up in another tool. Now lastly, we'll talk about local models. These are models that I'm capable of running completely locally on my own machine. Now the only ones that I really use here are the Quinn family. So Quinn 3.6 for example.

5:18And on my machines, I'm usually able to run up to 27 billion parameters. To be honest, the only time I do this, if I need to fine tune a model for a specific task, or if I'm going to be in an area where I'm not going to have internet like a plane, for example, so I can actually get some productive AI coding work done. I rarely use them, but when I do, that's the model that I reach for,

5:38and I find it's capable enough, especially for a short period of time. Now, of course, there are tons of other models and I've played around with a lot of them. These are just the ones I use most frequently. And that's not to say that I don't use any other model at all. For example, minimax is something I typically recommend if you're going to use Hermes

5:53agent, you don't have a large budget and you want to run tons of tool calls. That would be the one that I would reach for. Anyways, let's move to the next section now, which is going to be editors and IDs. Now this section is obviously only relevant to developers, but because that's my channel, I'm

6:07going to go over it. Now. For me, the main code editor that I prefer to use is cursor. Now this is my general purpose code editor. I like it because I find the harness inside of cursor is better than something like Claude code. I find it's better than Codex, and of course I can switch between all of the different models

6:23and even add my own models or use local models inside of this. Now I like using cursor when I'm working on serious development projects, so things where I actually care about the output, I'm going to maintain it, I'm scaling it. I have thousands of files, for example large dev projects. I won't use this for something really simple.

6:40If that's the case, I would just reach for something like Claude Code. Okay, now the next editor that I use is PyCharm. Now similarly to cursor, I will only use PyCharm typically for Python heavy projects, specifically web development projects, data science, data science, or in AI and the machine learning related tasks. Now I like using PyCharm again.

6:58What I need to do something a bit more professional where I actually am going to read the code. I'm going to look through it. I have a large repo, I have something I need to maintain and I can't mess something up. I always use a real IDE because the development tools that are inside of their help me and I am a real developer, so I can take advantage of them and be able to fix bugs a lot faster than just blindly prompting a model

7:19like you kind of doing Claude code, or inside of something like Codex. And then lastly, just because it's kind of in this section, I do use Code Rabbit for code reviews. I find it's quite good and it will again automatically review the code. Now, there's a ton of other tools that I use here too.

7:32However, these are the primary ones, which is why I'm mentioning them in this video. Okay, now let's move over to the development tech stack. So I have a lot of other stuff to go through, but what languages and tools do I actually reach for in terms of building an application from scratch, mostly in 2026? Now, because I'm using AI to build most of these applications, the stack

7:53that I use will differ than what I would have used a few years ago when I was going to build it by hand. So, for example, now I pretty much always reach for NodeJS when I'm building any type of web based application, which is 90% of what I make now. I like to use Node.js because I find it's very easy to deploy and the code base stays a lot simpler, especially when the AI is building it out, because the back end and the front front entry

8:16are somewhat coupled. So this just speeds up the development process for me. And because I'm not writing all of the code myself or reviewing every single line, I find that I get the best result in this tech stack compared to pretty much any of the other ones that I've tried, and it keeps it all full TypeScript.

8:30So I don't have two separate languages, and I have to instruct the model how to work with both of them. Now, in terms of the back end here, I will always connect to super base. Now I like using super base because it's very easy to integrate into AI projects and actually comes with an AI connector.

8:44Just to give you a sense of what I mean, I've pulled open a quick super base project that I've worked on. You see that I can view the full table schema. So all of the stuff is handled here. I can directly connect it to an AI tool, so I don't actually have to go in here and set up

8:57any of these features. It can just automatically handle everything for me. And then I can deploy my app super easily. I also can have cloud functions like you see here. I can have different triggers, I can have indexes, I have the role based access controls, the policies I have the authentication and the sign in. So in terms of what I want to build a project and actually deploy it, I typically will use this

9:18because it's going to be way easier when it comes to the deployment side. Rather than me handling a ton of API keys, setting up a dedicated database, setting up an authentication service, you get the idea. Now, Super Base, fortunately has been a long term sponsor of this channel, so shout out to them as well for supporting this video and sponsoring it. However, I would have mentioned them regardless

9:36because I use Super Base in a ton of different projects and it was. If you guys want to check it out, I'll leave a link to it in the description. But what I typically do is I literally just connect to it from Claude code. So I'll just go like MCP, for example, and then I'll just copy in the prompt or copy the command, and then it will connect to it and automatically set up

9:52everything that you see here. So I don't actually have to go in the dashboard and touch anything. Now moving on from Node.js. I do elso use Python frequently when I'm building applications. However, only when I'm building purely backend based applications or building things like bots. For example. I've actually built a lot of discord bots recently, which AI makes really easy, and for

10:10that I'll use Python in the discord Pi or discord rewrite whatever it's called now library. Lastly, in terms of deployment, depending on what I'm doing, I will deploy to a dedicated virtual private server or I will use something like for sale. And that's why having that super base Node.js and Vercel stack connected together

10:28makes this very easy, very simple to deploy, and very easy to set up. And I can do almost all of it just from my AI code editor. So cursor Claude Code, whatever, rather than having to actually go to a dashboard and add that level of friction. Anyways, that's the main tech stack. Now let's talk about productivity in general AI tools. So in this category I want to discuss a general AI tools I use that

10:51increase my productivity or kind of AI adjacent and connect to the tools that I already have. Now, the first tool on this list is something I've sworn by for over a year now, and this is Whisper Flow. Most of you guys probably already use it, but this is an AI voice dictation software. The way this works is very simple.

11:06There's a keyboard shortcut on your computer. For example. Let me show you. Hey, I'm just doing a dictation with Whisper Flow here to demonstrate how it works. And what it will do is very quickly transcribe what you say into a text box wherever your cursor is. It works inside a pretty much any tool, and it also works natively inside of cursor and other AI tools.

11:23So you can like tag files and stuff using your voice it. Anyways, the reason I like it is because I speak much faster than I type. The dictation is extremely accurate and you can see for yourself how much I actually use it. This is what the tool looks like. Fortunately, I have a long term partnership with them as well.

11:38I'll leave a link to in the description. It is free. You don't need to pay to try it and I think there's a trial or something. I don't know how they have it working now, but I promise you if you use it, you will not go back. Now beyond that, there's two two MCP providers story that I really like that allow me to connect all of my tools in one single

11:54MCP server to any AI not use. Those are Zapier, MCP, and compose you. Now you can choose which one you want to use. For me, they're very similar. It's kind of hard to compare them. I find composite, you have less control over the tools, however, it's easier to connect. And then Zapier MCP, it is not on discovery, which means

12:14it will add all of the tools at once, which can bloat the context a little bit. Anyways, what these both do is they let you connect your tools securely in one platform, and then once all of the tools are connected. So for example, I have like Slack and Google Docs here, I can just connect one

12:29MCP server to cursor to cloud, code to Codex, whatever. And all of the tools will be available. Now this is important because if I change computers, for example, I don't want to reconnect 20 different pieces of software. So what I do is I just connect the one MCP server and then everything is already authenticated

12:45and set up. They work elso I believe from the terminal or from the CLI, and both of them have like literally thousands of applications that you can add. So pretty much anything you want you can find and you can search. Now the next productivity tool I use is obsidian. I like the wiki. I like storing all of the data. I like having it connected to my Hermes agent, for example, for the accounting

13:04and understanding the records and the vendors and all of that. Don't need to get into it too much. But if you don't have obsidian set up, I would recommend checking it out. Next on my list, I want to share some AI development frameworks that I use. Now this is actually writing agents and writing code.

13:18You know, using a real framework, not using a tool like Claude Code or Codex or whatever. Like you're actually writing your own agent or writing some AI software, AI integrated software. Now for that I typically use lang graph or lang chain, especially if I'm working inside of Python. I find these are the best for orchestrating agents and doing kind of context management,

13:36tool calling, etc. I also like to use pandas and matplotlib, of course for data science AI related stuff. Organizing large pieces of data. I then use Streamlit whenever I want to create a simple dashboard, because it can be done directly inside of Python, and is a lot easier than trying to set up an API and using some JavaScript or HTML, etc.. Lastly, I do use the official OpenAI and anthropic APIs,

13:59especially if I'm making something relatively simple. Makes it very easy to orchestrate the context. Do the responses change the model? You get the idea. Okay, now lastly, we move on to AI platforms. Now when I say AI platforms, I don't mean kind of like software you download on your computer. I'm talking about typically web based platforms.

14:18So for this, the platforms that I typically use are Gen Spark. I typically use this when I want to create agents, do some automations have some workflows that are relatively simple, and I don't want to host them or set them up on my own. I then use lovable when I just want to generate

14:33landing pages, typically not when I want heavy logic applications. However, sometimes I will do that with the super base backend. But typically if I just want like a quick landing page or something very fast, I'll use lovable to do that. And then lastly, I use blitz blitzes, an enterprise AI software that I will use when I'm doing serious coding work. The way that it works is it ingests your entire code base, takes 3 or 4 days, understands what you want to do,

14:57you give it a prompt, and then it will write code and generate like hundreds of thousands of lines. But it takes a few days to execute. So this is only for super serious projects. And typically for me, it's very valuable for refactoring or taking something that's more legacy and bringing it up to date, because it can handle all of those changes at once.

15:14Okay, this was a lot of tools. So that's going to wrap up this video. If you guys enjoyed make sure leave a like subscribe to the channel and I will see you in the next one.