Toolchain of a GADA Scientist

Abstract

digital EDC of a GADA scientist

hardware

MBP 2023 with M2 Max & 32GB RAM

Browser

some of the key features I look for in a browser are:

• workspaces and tab stacking because I use tons of tabs.
• keyboard shortcuts to quickly help me switch between all the workspaces
• Quick Commands because who got mental space to remember how to update a setting (like keyboard shortscuts)
• Sync across devices: mobile, desktop(s)

And so therefore I use:

• Vivaldi¹ : brew install --cask vivaldi
• Opera Air²: brew install --cask opera-air

Editor

My weapon of choice is zed which is actually pretty great for agentic coding and lots of flexibility in terms of choosing your own LLM³.

brew install --cask zed

1

official brew formula is here

The Toolchain

• docker: brew install --cask docker
  • you will need to follow this guide here
  • and you do want the cask version because the official version for Mac is a GUI… i.e. there are no headless version
  • my docker cheatsheet
• macmon:
  • TUI for monitoring resource use on Apple’s ARM architecture MacBook
  • like a much better version of htop
  • install: brew update && brew install macmon
• Sequel-Ace:
  • MySQL management for macOS
  • install: brew update && brew install --cask sequel-ace
• yt-dlp
  • feature-rich CLI audio/video downloader with support for thousand of sites, including YouTube and Soundcloud
  • it’s a bit more advanced with the use of format selection for selecting the right stream but it also uses ffmpeg under the hood to merge audio and video streams. Format selection examples are available.
  • install: pipx install "yt-dlp[default]"
• asciinema
  • create recording of terminal sessions that’s easy to share
  • sharing can be done by embedding the asciinema player⁴ or converting the recording to gif using agg⁵
  • install: pipx install asciinema

coding agents

• Claude Code
  • native install using bash
  • setup API keys
• OpenCode⁶: brew install anomalyco/tap/opencode
• Ollama⁷
  • run cloud models: ollama run qwen3.5:397b-cloud
  • coding agents: ollama launch claude
  • and it also works with zed

python environments

As of 2025⁸, I manage both python versions and virtual environments with uv

python based CLIs using pipx.

Footnotes

1. the sync feature only started to work in 2024, the browser do crash unexpectedly on startup from time to time, and the RAM management is just okay… although I do use tons of tabs. The built in ProtonVPN is kinda cool.

2. because I ❤️ mindfulness, the built in Aria AI is pretty good, and it basically have all the features above

3. 50 Zed-hosted prompt per month using the latest Claude model. But you could also setup OpenRouter or Ollama or even use your Co-pilot quota in zed.

4. you will need to upload the created recording, and the asciinema player is purpose-built for sharing terminal sessions.

5. you will need to install agg using brew install agg

6. if you don’t /connect, zen’s free models will be used as default

7. lots changed with ollama since 2024, make sure you upgrade it:

   brew upgrade ollama
   ollama serve    # need to get the app running before any running any other commands
   ollama sigin    # for using ollama cloud, you'll need an account first

8. I use to manage using pyenv and the virtualenvwrapper, see here for an archive of that setup.