2025 has been a transformational year for me. Deep gratitude to the platform builders and engineers who made it possible.

Published: December 23, 2025

For 25 years my world was Python, SAS, SQL, models. Now it's apps, AI agents, automation tools. My most recent client project, live now: an internal AI tool for 20 users. React frontend, PHP backend, MySQL database, LLM integration. Two years ago, I couldn't have built this. Alongside, I built 30+ open source apps at tigzig.com - database AI, quants tools, automations.

None of this would exist without these platforms and the builders who brought them to life:

AI Coders

Claude Code and Cursor are top of my list. Cursor for over a year, Claude Code the past months. Not just coders - great teachers too. When you interrogate them - why, what, how before they write a single line, executions are faster, cleaner, and your understanding deepens.

Deployment & Infrastructure

When I started deploying, Render made my first app live with a few clicks. As apps grew, I moved to self-hosting with Hetzner and Coolify. Hetzner for the VPS, Coolify for deployment. 30+ projects running there now. Vercel for frontends - 40+ apps on their free tier. And Neon for instant PostgreSQL databases - API call, one second, you have a database. Critical for AI workflows.

YouTube Mentors

Three YouTube mentors taught me:

All experienced builders and engineers. Eye opening venturing into the world of auth, state, hooks, routers, controllers, workers, caches, headers, CDNs, endpoint security, reverse-proxies...

AI Agent Platform

For AI agent work, FlowiseAI is my go-to platform. Multi-agent setups, memory and state handled out of the box, native UI plus API access. Simple to install and use. Only hard-code an agent when Flowise can't handle it.

Python Tools

On the Python side: xlwings Lite (lite.xlwings.com) from Felix Zumstein - the Python in Excel I was waiting for. Apps with Excel as frontend connected to APIs, databases, LLMs. And Mito AI (docs.trymito.io) from Aaron Diamond-Reivich and Jacob Diamond-Reivich for Jupyter work. It's the Claude Code of Jupyter.

Custom GPTs & Automation

OpenAI Custom GPTs for automation without custom UI builds - embedded AI, Python sandbox, file search, web search, API connectivity, auth. Plug and play. Delivered solid value to clients. My first choice before building custom UI.

PDF Processing

Llama Parse for PDF processing - PDF to markdown including images and complex tables. One line, no setup headaches. It just works. Many of my projects depend on this.

To every platform builder and engineer - thank you. You made a transformation possible I couldn't have pulled off on my own.