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Artem Daniliants

Uses

Table of Contents

Last updated: March 2026. Everything here is what I actually use, not what I’m paid to recommend.

Hardware
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Workstations
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  • Mac Studio M4 Max (128 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD) - primary home workstation. Overkill for marketing work, perfect for running local LLMs and Docker containers alongside everything else.
  • MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro (32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD) - travel laptop. Still excellent. The 2 TB SSD means I carry my entire second brain with me.

Mobile
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  • iPhone Air (eSIM only) - primary phone. Went eSIM-only and haven’t looked back.
  • iPhone 12 Pro Max - backup device.
  • iPad Air - reading, light work, travel entertainment.

Travel kit
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  • GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 (Flint) - WiFi 6 travel router running AdGuard, VPN, and Tor. Every hotel WiFi goes through this. The Mac Studio runs Content Caching (300 GB) behind it when I’m traveling with multiple devices.

Server & homelab
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Tank server (Helsinki)
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Self-hosted on bare metal in Helsinki, connected via Tailscale mesh to all my devices.

  • Hardware: Intel Core i9-9900K, 128 GB RAM, Ubuntu 24.04
  • Orchestration: Docker Swarm, managed through Dokploy
  • Running:
    • Ollama - 12 local LLM models (~64 GB). For when I want to run things without sending data to the cloud.
    • FESS + OpenSearch - full-text search with OCR across all my documents (PDFs, spreadsheets, markdown). My entire knowledge base is searchable.
    • Manticore Search - email search index. Faster than Gmail search, works offline.
    • Forgejo - private Git hosting. All my code lives here, not on GitHub.
    • Syncthing - file sync across all devices. Replaces Dropbox/iCloud for anything important.
    • SilverBullet - wiki/note-taking (experimenting).
    • PostgreSQL - shared database for various tools.
    • Uptime Kuma - monitoring.
    • Umami - privacy-respecting analytics for daniliants.com and client sites.
    • Homepage - dashboard for all services.
    • FileBrowser - web file manager for remote access.
    • daniliants.com - this website, self-hosted.

Why self-host? Control, privacy, learning. Running your own infrastructure teaches you things no tutorial can. And when you advise clients on hosting and performance, it helps to actually manage servers.

Software
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AI & LLMs
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  • Claude (app + API + Claude Code) - primary AI tool. I use Claude Code for building automations, processing data, managing my knowledge base. It’s not an assistant - it’s a coworker.
  • ChatGPT - secondary, mostly for comparison and specific use cases.
  • LM Studio / Ollama - local models for private work and experimentation.
  • AnythingLLM - RAG interface for local documents.

Development
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  • Zed - primary editor. Fast, clean, good AI integration.
  • VS Code / Cursor - for heavier projects and when I need specific extensions.
  • Ghostty - terminal emulator.
  • OrbStack - Docker on Mac, much faster than Docker Desktop.
  • uv - Python package manager. Replaced pip/pipenv/poetry and never looked back.
  • Hugo - static site generator (this site).
  • Deno - for JavaScript/TypeScript when needed.

Productivity
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  • Todoist - task management. Everything actionable lives here.
  • Notion - documentation and team wiki.
  • Linear - project tracking for dev work. Replaced Jira (happily).
  • Raycast - launcher, clipboard history, snippets. Replaced Spotlight and Alfred.
  • Moom - window management.
  • Qbserve - automatic time tracking. Tells me where my hours actually go.

Marketing & SEO
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  • Ahrefs - primary SEO tool. Worth every cent.
  • Google Analytics / Search Console - the basics.
  • Screaming Frog - technical SEO audits.

Communication
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  • Slack - team communication.
  • Telegram - personal and some client communication.
  • Zoom / Loom - calls and async video.

Browsers
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  • Arc - primary browser. Tab management is genuinely better.
  • Brave - secondary, privacy-focused.
  • Chrome / Firefox / Safari - for testing and specific use cases.

Finance
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  • Wise - multi-currency banking (EUR, USD, CAD).
  • Xero - accounting (transitioning).

Sync & backup
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  • Syncthing - file sync across all devices. Open source, no cloud dependency.
  • Backblaze - cloud backup for everything.
  • 1Password - password management.

Automation I’ve built
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I build tools for myself using Python and Claude Code. Everything runs locally, uses uv for dependency management, and is version-controlled.

  • Insights pipeline - processes bookmarks into enriched knowledge files (web articles, videos, PDFs, Hacker News threads).
  • News digest - fetches 100+ RSS feeds, scores for relevance using AI, generates daily HTML digest.
  • Invoicer - monthly invoice generation, client management, Gmail draft creation. Multi-company support.
  • Sleep lab - analyses sleep data correlated with location, weather, exercise, and phone usage.
  • Email search - indexes email via Manticore Search for instant full-text search.
  • FESS search - full-text search with OCR across my entire document library.

What I don’t use
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  • Notion AI - tried it, Claude is better.
  • HubSpot - too heavy for what I need. YAML files and markdown work fine for a 20-client agency.
  • Figma - I leave design to designers.
  • Jira - life’s too short.