Tools I use¶

No recommendations. No affiliate links. These are the tools I actually use, the reasons I chose them, and the honest caveats.

Writing and knowledge management¶

Obsidian — all documentation starts here. Plain markdown files, local storage, no cloud dependency. The entire libdrone documentation stack lives in an Obsidian vault before it is published anywhere. I use it for personal notes, project documentation, and anything I want to still be able to read in ten years regardless of what happens to any company.

Why not Notion, Confluence, etc. — I use Confluence at work and it is fine for what it does. I would not use it for anything I own. Markdown in a folder is a format. Confluence is a product. When the product changes or disappears, the format remains.

Documentation publishing¶

MkDocs with Material theme — static site generator from markdown. This site runs on it. libdrone.eu runs on it. Fast, reliable, version-controlled. mkdocs build produces a folder of HTML. Nginx serves it.

Why not Hugo, Jekyll, etc. — I tried others. Material for MkDocs has the best documentation-focused feature set and I can configure it without fighting it. For technical documentation specifically, it is the right tool.

Hardware design¶

CadQuery — parametric CAD in Python. The libdrone frame generator is 1,815 lines of Python that produces all printed parts from a single variables file. I am learning it. It is hard. It is worth it because the output is reproducible and version-controlled in a way that proprietary CAD files are not.

FreeCAD — for work that does not need full parametric generation. Open source, improving rapidly. The FreeCAD Cookbook in the libdrone documentation covers the full workflow.

Onshape — browser-based, useful for quick reference and collaboration. Not my primary tool.

3D printing¶

PRUSA CoreOne — built from a kit. The build process is itself a documentation exercise — the PRUSA manual is one of the best pieces of technical documentation in the consumer hardware space. I learned from it.

AI¶

Claude (Anthropic) — primary AI tool for documentation work. I use the API for the libdrone documentation pipeline. I use the web interface for thinking through architecture and drafting. The reason I chose it over alternatives is the quality of reasoning on complex technical subjects and the ability to maintain context over long documents.

Infrastructure¶

Synology NAS — hosts all sites including this one. Nginx serves static files. Simple, reliable, runs at home, under my control.

Git — everything is version-controlled. The documentation stack, the CadQuery generator, the site configs. If something breaks, I have the history.