Beyond the AI CLI and terminal mux, there’s a handful of infrastructure tools that make daily development work without friction. They’re not the primary tools; they’re the connective tissue . Pick once, configure once, mostly forget they exist until they matter.
What for: running services locally without polluting the host (databases for dev, test services, sometimes build environments)Pick: Docker Desktop on Windows/Mac; Docker Engine on Linux servers; Podman if you specifically want rootless / daemonlessWSL note: Docker Desktop’s WSL2 integration works well; running the daemon natively in WSL is also fineInstall: Platform-specific from docker.com
Global config I set:
user.name and user.email per GitHubinit.defaultBranch = mainpull.rebase = false (I prefer merge commits to see context)core.autocrlf = input on Windows (avoid CRLF drift)
Aliases I keep: git st, git lg (pretty log), git wt (worktree shortcut)Git worktrees for parallel AI work — see ../patterns/parallel-agents-worktrees.md
What for: full-filesystem search on Windows — instant, by filename or regex. Dramatically faster than find on /mnt/c/ from WSL.How I use from WSL: call es.exe (the CLI) via the Windows path:
"/mnt/c/Users/<name>/AppData/Local/Everything/es.exe" " pattern "
Why: find on /mnt/c/ is 10–100× slower than Everything. For PC-wide filename search, Everything is unbeatable.Install: voidtools.com
Tool Purpose Notes ripgrep (rg) Full-text search Default for code search; much faster than grep -r fd File finding find replacement with sane defaultsjq JSON processing Parsing API responses, config manipulation bat cat with syntax highlightingPleasant reading fzf Fuzzy finder Pipe-compatible; composes with other tools delta Better git diff Side-by-side, syntax-highlighted diffs
Install via whatever your platform uses (cargo, apt, brew, winget). These are stratum 4 (deterministic, drop-in) — install scripts can include them unconditionally.
Starship prompt (optional) — fast, Git-aware promptdirenv — per-project env vars automatically loaded when entering directorydotenv-safe patterns — for local development only; production uses real secret stores
Tool Why not NerdFonts as required I use them when they’re already there but don’t make my tools depend on them — portability across machines where I can’t install fonts Oh-my-zsh / Oh-my-bash Heavy framework layers. I’d rather hand-pick bashrc snippets. fish shellGreat shell, but my scripts assume bash-compatible syntax across all my devices. Switching would mean rewriting all helper scripts. Zsh Fine; I’ve just settled on bash for consistency across WSL + Termux + servers.
