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Developer Tools Stack — VN 2025 Setup

Mar 22, 2026
This is the current VN developer toolchain — updated for 2025. Everything listed is actively used in production.

SHELL & TERMINAL
Shell: Zsh + Starship prompt (fast, minimal, cross-platform)
Terminal: Warp (AI autocomplete, persistent history, session management)
Multiplexer: Zellij (lighter than tmux, sane config format)

EDITOR
Primary: Zed — written in Rust, starts instantly, native LSP, collaborative
Secondary: VS Code + extensions: Prettier, ESLint, GitLens, Error Lens

VERSION CONTROL
Git aliases in .gitconfig: co = checkout, st = status, lg = log --graph --oneline
GitHub CLI (gh) for PR review in terminal
Conventional commits enforced via commitlint + husky

LANGUAGES
PHP 8.2 for backend (this platform is built on it)
TypeScript / React for frontend tooling
Python for scripting and data tasks
Bash for deployment automation

LOCAL ENVIRONMENT
Docker + ddev for PHP projects (consistent across machines)
Vite for frontend bundling (zero-config, HMR)
Tailwind CSS (JIT mode, config-based design tokens)

DEPLOYMENT
Shared hosting: FTP automation via PowerShell scripts (see repo)
VPS: Ansible playbooks for reproducible server setup
CI: GitHub Actions for lint, test, and build checks

DATABASE
MySQL 8.0 (production), SQLite for small tooling scripts
TablePlus for GUI browsing

TESTING
PHPUnit for unit tests
Playwright for E2E browser automation
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