My workflow

Below I describe the tools that I use for my personal workflow. It has been designed with privacy and freedom in mind. Last year, I started migrating to tools with a European signature for the better. Relevant sources that helped me kick-start this learning path are written by Toon van Daele (2025), Edward Komenda (2025), and Peter Siering en Alieke van Sommeren (2025).

As we are still underway to perfection, below some non-European tools are still included (written in italics). Ideally, these are replaced by European alternatives in the near future. If you have any suggestions, keep me posted!

Chatting

• I use LM Studio as a local IDE and Ollama as a CLI for a wide range of local LLM’s. One of the reasons for running LLM’s locally are privacy concerns.
• I use Anthropic Claude, Proton Lumo and Mistral Le Chat as cloud services to ask everyday questions.

Coding

• I use the R language for stats coding and RStudio as my preferred IDE for R programming. I activatedGitHub Copilot for code completion in RStudio. Optionally, install the chattr chatbot and enter your OpenAI secret key.

Developing

• Currently, I am trying out the Mistral 7B instruct v0.3 open-weight LLM model in LM Studio to chat with my locally stored documents. The strategic partnership between Mistral AI and semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML enhances value to the Mistral AI value chain.
• I rent a cloud VPS from Hetzner. Alternatively, I could switch to Scaleway, perhaps this more closely resembles the range of services of DigitalOcean that I used before. Let’s see whether I need these additional options.
• I use git for code versioning and Codeberg for storing my recent repositories. However, there are still active repositories at GitHub which I used before; these will be migrated to Codeberg upon updating codes.
• I use VS code as my IDE for code development and to connect to my remote VPS.

Learning

• I am creating a local privacy-first solution for my knowledge management, called ResearchVault.
• Before, I resisted using Obsidian as connecting notes had to be done manually, but this is now automated by the integration with local LLMs in my ResearchVault.

Listening

• I use Overcast for listening to podcasts.

Operating

• I stopped using Microsoft Windows as the operating system on my desktop, bought a Mac Mini M4, and now work on macOS. Note thatfor personal use I phased out Microsoft Office tooling altogether.

Publishing

• I use Quarto for creating websites, for example, this homepage of mine.
• I publish my Quarto websites to Codeberg Pages. Given the lack of a quarto publish command for easy publishing to Codeberg Pages, I created a bash script for this (see here).

Reading

• I use FreshRSS as a self-hosted RSS feed aggregator, and NetNewsWire as a feed reader app. This is all integrated in my ResearchVault, which allows me to efficiently exploring the academic literature, reading news articles, listening to podcasts, and even watching YouTube videos.
• I use Zotero to manage my references since 2009.
• I’ve added these plugins to Zotero: Actions and Tags for Zotero, Better BibTeX for Zotero, Better Notes for Zotero, and Scite Zotero Plugin (V7+).

Surfing

• I use the Brave browser (Van Daele, 2025, p. 63).

Writing

• I use the Proton services for email, calendar, and even docs. I switched from Microsoft OneDrive to using Proton Drive.
• I use Obsidian for writing my notes in markdown. I recommend using the OneNote Md Exporter tool to export Microsoft OneNote notes to markdown notes.
• I use the OnlyOffice suite to view, edit, and collaborate on docs, sheets, slides (Van Daele, 2025, p. 58). It is largely compatible with Microsoft Office formats. Interestingly, the Euro-Office initiative is a fork of the OnlyOffice codebase.
• I make annotations to the pdf’s in Zotero. When done, I use the ‘Add Note from Annotations’ functionality to create a personal summary note based on all annotations in the pdf.

Storing

• I use the Proton services for drive, passwords, and wallets. Recently, I switched all-the-way from Microsoft OneDrive to using Proton Drive (helper file).
• I use (kind of) the 3-2-1 principle for backing up my files and repositories. I have a local backup stored at an external SSD drive and automatic backups stored at my Proton Drive.

References

• Toon van Daele (2025), “20X gratis en Europees”, Computer Totaal, 342, juni/juli, 58-63
• Edward Komenda (2025), “Wary of US surveillance? Try these European alternatives to Big Tech”, Privacy Guides, Proton
• Peter Siering & Alieke van Sommeren (2025), “Alternatieven voor de VS-cloud”, C’T, 6, 38-45