The Stack.
The exact hardware, software, and AI orchestration I use to architect and ship full-stack MERN products at AI-speed.
01 // WORKSTATION HARDWARE
- 16" MacBook Pro · Apple Silicon
- M-series primary workstation — silent, fast compiles, and all-day battery for deep architecture work.
- Dual 27" 4K Displays
- High-refresh external monitors — editor, terminal, and live preview side by side.
- Mechanical Keyboard
- Tactile board tuned for long, low-fatigue coding sessions.
- Ergonomic Vertical Mouse
- Wrist-neutral pointer for marathon refactors and reviews.
- Noise-Cancelling Headphones
- Flow-state isolation during deep orchestration and design work.
02 // MERN ARCHITECTURE STACK
- Next.js (App Router)
- React framework of choice — server components, file-based routing, static export, first-class TypeScript.
- TypeScript
- Strict end-to-end types — the contract that keeps AI-generated code safe to ship.
- Tailwind CSS
- Utility-first styling and design tokens; the system AI composes new UI against.
- Node.js + Express
- Service layer for REST APIs, validation middleware, and orchestration endpoints.
- MongoDB
- Primary document store — flexible schemas and Atlas vector search for RAG.
- Redis
- Cache rings and rate-limit insulation in front of both databases and LLM calls.
- Framer Motion
- Declarative animation for high-fidelity, interactive interfaces.
03 // AI ORCHESTRATION CORE
- Claude
- Primary architectural reasoning and orchestration engine — system design, refactoring, and end-to-end generation.
- Cursor IDE
- AI-native editor for codebase-aware generation, multi-file edits, and inline agentic flows.
- GitHub Copilot
- Inline completion for the mechanical, line-by-line layer of implementation.
- Claude Code
- Agentic CLI for terminal-driven, repository-wide engineering tasks.