My workflow

Published

September 13, 2025

Below I describe the tools that I use for my personal workflow. It has been designed with privacy and freedom in mind. Recently, 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 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 installed LM Studio on Windows for using a wide range of local LLM’s. One of the reasons for running LLM’s locally are privacy concerns. LM Studio is designed to tackle these concerns.
  • 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.
  • I still use ChatGPT and NotebookLM to ask everyday questions and chat with sets of

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 by 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 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 connecting to my local WLS instance and my remote VPS.

Learning

  • Currently, I am trying Recall for my knowledge management, however, Anytype may be the future! Before, I have used Obsidian but connecting notes manually and duplicating all metadata from Zotero was just too much for me.

Listening

  • Currently, I am listening to podcasts using Snipd. Afterwards, I export the snippets with saved insights to markdown notes that I can import into Joplin and edit them further from there.

Operating

  • I still use Microsoft Windows as the operating system both on my desktop and my laptop. Note that I phased out Microsoft Office tooling.

Publishing

Reading

Surfing

  • I recently switched from the Brave browser to the Vivaldi browser (Van Daele, 2025, p. 63).

Writing

  • I use the Proton services for email, calendar, and even docs. Recently, I switched from Microsoft OneDrive to using Proton Drive.
  • I use Joplin for writing my notes in markdown and the Joplin cloud to share these among my devices. 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.
  • 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 by Proton Drive in multiple datacenters.

References