Forem: Madza

9 Exciting Developer Tools You Should Be Exploring Right Now 🧑‍💻🔥

Madza — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:08:26 +0000

As developers, we're constantly juggling multiple things at once — shipping features, keeping production stable, collecting data, automating repetitive work, and making sure the infrastructure holds up well.

The right tools can take whole categories of that off your plate. But the ecosystem moves fast, and most "top tools" lists are either outdated or just rehashing the same big names you already know about.

So I spent some time digging into tools that have either launched recently or made significant improvements — and picked 9 that I think are genuinely worth your attention.

Each one solves a specific problem from scraping web data, spinning up containerized apps without cloud configuration, swapping out bloated analytics, or managing performance analytics and traffic data.

For each tool, I've included a short description, the key features worth knowing about, and a direct link to check it out yourself. Let's dive in!

1. Oxylabs – Extract public data from websites at scale

Oxylabs is a maintenance-free data collection tool that scrapes structured data from any website, no proxy management, no CAPTCHA headaches, and zero scraping code.

Rather than keeping brittle scrapers alive through every layout change and anti-bot update, you send a simple API request and get back clean JSON or raw HTML in seconds.

Some of the most awesome features:

🌍 Global proxy pool spanning 195 countries: Geo-targeted data from any of 195 countries gets handled by automatic IP rotation, complex sites get bypassed without manual proxy management.

🤖 CAPTCHA bypass & fingerprinting: Data retrieval is kept intact through ML-driven proxy selection, unique browser fingerprints, and automatic CAPTCHA solving built into every request.

⚙️ Powerful parsers with zero maintenance: Define your reusable parsing logic with XPath or CSS selectors and Oxylabs auto-adapts whenever target sites change.

🖥️ Full JavaScript rendering for dynamic websites: Extract accurate data from SPAs and interactive pages, custom interactions, and support for complex dynamic content.

🗓️ Automated scheduler with cloud delivery: Instead of re-sending the same requests manually, set a schedule and let jobs run on their own. Finished results land in your Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage bucket.

🧠 OxyCopilot AI code generation: Describe what data you want in plain English and the built-in AI writes the scraping request and parsing instructions. No digging through API docs or manual payloads.

Ready to stop maintaining scrapers and start working with clean, structured data? Try Oxylabs Web Scraper API — no credit card required, up to 2,000 results for free.

🌎 Website Link: https://oxylabs.io/

Thanks to the Oxylabs team for sponsoring this article!

2. Blink.new - Build full-stack apps from a single prompt

Blink is an agentic full-stack app builder that generates production-ready apps - complete with database, authentication, APIs, and global hosting, entirely from plain prompts.

Key features & why to use it:

Agentic AI writes, debugs, and deploys your entire full-stack app automatically.
Built-in auth, SQL database, Stripe payments, edge functions, and CDN hosting included.
Access your full codebase anytime and deploy it to any platform you choose.

🌎 Website Link: https://blink.new

3. Onlook - Create, style, and edit your UI/UX visually

Onlook is a visual code editor for React and NextJS that lets developers drag, resize, and restyle components — with every change written directly back to JSX/TSX.

Key features & why to use it:

Drag and resize components visually while changes are written directly to your code.
Revision history and AI Chat let you iterate on designs and revert changes instantly.
Import GitHub repo, collaborate with teammates, and publish to a custom domain.

🌎 Website Link: https://onlook.com

4. Turso - Run a low-latency SQLite DB for production

Turso is a production-ready SQLite solution that brings embedded replicas, multi-region cloud deployment, and multi-tenant scaling to applications that need a lightweight but powerful database.

Key features & why to use it:

Embedded replicas sync to local SQLite files for ultra-fast, offline-capable read queries.
Scale to millions of tenant databases instantly via a simple API with zero overhead.
Native vector search, database branching, and WASM browser support are all built in.

🌎 Website Link: https://turso.tech

5. Koyeb - Deploy intensive apps & models globally

Koyeb is a serverless cloud platform that lets you deploy containers, APIs, and AI inference endpoints from a Git push or CLI call across 50+ global locations — with no server management required.

Key features & why to use it:

Serverless containers scale to zero and back up in under 200ms cold start.
One-click deploys for popular AI models, frameworks, and databases across all stacks.
Per-second billing with GPU, CPU, and accelerator options at up to 80% savings vs. hyperscalers.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.koyeb.com

6. Tines - Build agents & automations for your workspace

Tines lets any team build, run, and monitor powerful automations using a drag-and-drop interface. Connect API-enabled tool across your stack and automate repetitive work.

Key features & why to use it:

Visual Storyboard connects any API-enabled tool across your entire stack.
Built-in Cases feature manages incidents end-to-end from alert intake to resolution.
AI Workbench and agent support let you wire LLMs directly into any automation step.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.tines.com

7. Floors.js - Add a website chat room with one script

Floors.js is a single-script library that drops a live, interactive pixel chat room directly onto any webpage, giving sites a real-time social layer with minimal effort.

Key features & why to use it:

Single script tag embed — no build step, no back-end, no configuration needed.
Real-time avatars create an instantly engaging, novelty-driven social widget.
Lightweight drop-in works on any static site, landing page, or web app.

🌎 Website Link: https://floorsjs.com/

8. Rybbit - Track privacy-first real-time analytics

Rybbit is an open-source, cookieless Google Analytics replacement that delivers real-time traffic data, session replays, funnels, and Web Vitals with full GDPR/CCPA compliance and a single line of setup code.

Key features & why to use it:

Cookieless tracking means no consent banners and no data regulation headaches ever.
Session replay and conversion funnels come built in on a clean, fast dashboard.
Fully open source — self-host for free or use the managed cloud plan.

🌎 Website Link: https://rybbit.com

9. AppSignal - Monitor the app performance & issues

AppSignal is a developer-friendly application performance monitoring platform that combines error tracking, performance tracing, host metrics, logs, uptime, and anomaly detection into one clean, easy-to-navigate interface.

Key features & why to use it:

Deep native integrations for Ruby, Elixir, Node.js, Python, and JavaScript.
Rust-powered lightweight agent installs in minutes with near-zero overhead on your app.
Lots of monitoring features — errors, performance, hosts, logs, uptime, and more.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.appsignal.com

Did you like the resources? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

8 Exciting Developer Tools for Building and Shipping Faster 🧑‍💻⚡️

Madza — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 14:48:58 +0000

As developers, we are always trying to find the best ways to optimize our workflows. The right tools can completely change the way we work, as they can make complicated tasks simple.

However, there is a vast number of developer tools available, and it is quite difficult to find the ones that really improve your productivity and integrate perfectly with your workflow.

In this article, I have compiled a list of 8 of my recent favorite developer resources that can be useful in building modern coding projects and help you to stay competitive.

The focus of these tools is to improve your efficiency and increase your developer experience. They include anything from learning new developer skills to automating common tasks in your workflow.

You will find a short description, main features, and links to each tool so that you can quickly decide if they meet your requirements. Let's get started and see how these tools can make you a better dev!

1. Hyperskill – Master Coding by Building Practical Projects

Hyperskill is an interactive learning platform that teaches you agentic AI engineering, data science, full-stack development, etc by building real-world projects via hands-on coding.

Instead of watching tutorials, you dive straight into creating functional applications while learning concepts in context. The platform provides instant feedback and automated code reviews.

Some of the most awesome features:

👨‍💻 Project-driven learning approach: Learn by building actual applications rather than bit-sized coding exercises based on theory. Each project teaches real skills you'll use in production environments.

🚀 Structured career skill paths: Choose your learning track (Java, Python, Kotlin, etc) and follow a carefully designed progression that builds expertise incrementally with clear milestones.

🔥 Modern and relevant tech stack: Learn the tools and frameworks that companies actually use - React/NextJS, SQL databases, REST APIs, AI, microservices, and more.

🧠 Based on real problem-solving: Tackle complex challenges that require critical thinking, not just syntax memorization, so you actually understand how to architect solutions.

🏆 Active community & gamification: Learn alongside other developers, earn achievements, and track your progress with a motivating system that keeps you engaged.

Ready to transition from tutorials to building real-world systems and land your first developer job? Start learning on Hyperskill today and become the developer companies want to hire!

🌎 Website Link: https://hyperskill.org/

Thanks to the Hyperskill team for sponsoring this article!

2. Stacker - Build internal tools without code

Stacker‍‌‍‍‌ allows the team to build custom internal tools and dashboards by directly integrating with databases and APIs, just by providing text prompts and without writing any custom code.

Key features & why to use it:

Advanced builder that can connect with databases, APIs, and spreadsheets immediately.
Pre-built templates for common workflows like admin panels and CRMs.
Collaborate in real-time with role-based permissions for team access control.

🌎 Website Link: https://stackerhq.com/

3. Sketch - Design interfaces and prototypes

Sketch is a comprehensive vector-based design solution that is solely developed for UI/UX designers and offers very intuitive designer workflows for the creation of interfaces, prototypes, and design systems in a collaborative way.

Key features & why to use it:

Vector editing with symbols and reusable components for design consistency.
Real-time collaboration features for seamless team design workflows together.
Huge plugin ecosystem that can extend functionalities for niche design requirements.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.sketch.com/

4. Authgear - Add authentication and authorization

Authgear offers a single authentication solution with a lot of out of the box features such as passwordless login, social providers, and MFA, reducing the implementation time from weeks to hours.

Key features & why to use it:

Login, signup, and account management flows UI comes pre-built and thus are ready instantly.
It supports passwordless, biometrics, and social authentication methods natively.
It complies with privacy regulations such as GDPR and SOC 2 standards.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.authgear.com/

5. Flagsmith - Manage feature flags easily

Flagsmith offers the management of feature flags, along with the remote configuration that essentially allows for teams to have total control over their releases, conduct A/B tests, and manage the introduction of new features.

Key features & why to use it:

Enable or disable features in an environment instantly without the need for new deployments or builds.
Segment users for targeted rollouts and personalized feature experiences easily.
Real-time configuration updates with SDKs for all major programming languages.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.flagsmith.com/

6. TestSprite - Automate app testing workflows

TestSprite is an AI-powered agent that autonomously performs testing-related activities such as generate test plans, write, and execute test code, debug problems, and provide reports for frontend UI, backend APIs, and full-stack workflows.

Key features & why to use it:

It’s AI generates, executes, and evaluates tests covering functional, security, load, and edge cases.
Supports frontend/backend testing, intelligent debugging with fix suggestions, and NL feedback.
Integrates with CI/CD pipelines for automated validation, ideal for eliminating manual test scripting.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.testsprite.com/

7. Resend - Send emails to your customers easily

Resend makes email delivery easy with a developer-friendly API and stunning React email templates, providing a modern and simple alternative to complicated email services.

Key features & why to use it:

React-powered email templates with readily available components for quickly creating visually pleasing emails.
Comes with built-in analytics that tracks delivery rates, opens, and clicks automatically.
Simple API design with excellent DX and comprehensive documentation.

🌎 Website Link: https://resend.com/

8. Docusaurus - Build documentation websites quickly

Docusaurus is a static site generator specifically designed for documentation. It allows developers to make fast, SEO-friendly docs sites using Markdown while still providing a great user experience.

Key features & why to use it:

Content is based on markdown with MDX support for easy interactive documentation components.
Built-in versioning, search, and i18n features for comprehensive documentation needs.
Performance-wise, it is perfect due to the static generation and progressive web app capabilities implemented.

🌎 Website Link: https://docusaurus.io/

Did you like the resources? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

8 Modern AI Coding Tools You Need to Bookmark for 2026 🔥👨‍💻

Madza — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:07:23 +0000

Artificial‍‌‍‍‌ intelligence (AI) is transforming the way developers work by automating the repetitive tasks and significantly enhancing the productivity of the entire software lifecycle.

Every day, thousands of new tools are being released, but it can be quite overwhelming and challenging to figure out which ones really help in saving time and improving the quality of code.

I’ve curated a roundup of 8 AI developer tools that you will probably be wondering why you did not discover them sooner, from code reviewers and vector databases to model visualizers and voice agents.

These tools will facilitate your work in PR reviewing, writing documentation, to having AI-powered real-time agents that guide you in your work, thus helping you to develop more efficiently and intelligently.

Each product has an image preview, description, key features, and a link to the website for a quick evaluation to help you decide how you could best integrate them in your workflow.

1. CodeRabbit – Review pull requests with AI assistance

CodeRabbit is an AI code review tool that understands your entire codebase, not just the changes you made, delivering context-aware analysis directly in your pull requests.

It catches bugs before they reach production, learns from your team's preferences and coding standards, and provides instant one-click fixes to keep your code shipping fast while maintaining quality.

Some of the most awesome features include:

🎯 Full codebase-aware reviews: Analyze changes with complete context, architectural diagrams, and one-click AI fixes that follow your coding guidelines.

🛠️ Agentic chat workflows: Chat with AI for feedback, unit tests, docstrings, issue creation, and improvements that learn from your interactions.

📊 Automated summaries & reports: Generate PR summaries, walkthroughs, visual diagrams, standup reports, and integrate with Jira/Linear for seamless workflows.

🔒 Enterprise-grade security: Ephemeral environments, end-to-end encryption, SOC2 Type II compliant with no code retention post-review.

⚡ IDE, CLI & Git integration: AI reviews in VS Code, Cursor, and Windsurf, plus CLI support and native GitHub/GitLab/Azure DevOps integration.

Ready to catch bugs before they hit production and speed up your code reviews? Get started with CodeRabbit today and let AI handle the heavy lifting!

🌎 Website Link: https://www.coderabbit.ai/

Thanks to the CodeRabbit team for sponsoring this article!

2. Hexabot - Build AI chatbots visually with no-code

Hexabot is the platform that was built especially for developers who want to create multi-channel AI chatbots using no-code tools, thus they get to avoid spend time on custom integrations and deployments.

Key features & why to use it:

Visual editor for drag-and-drop conversation flows.
LLM integration with intent recognition and multilingual support.
Multi-channel deployment across websites and messaging apps.

🌎 Website Link: https://hexabot.ai/

3. LobeChat - Run multi-model AI conversations

LobeChat is an open-source, modern-design AI chat framework supporting multiple LLM providers (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Ollama, etc.), MCP plugins, knowledge bases, and one-click deployment.

Key features & why to use it:

MCP plugin marketplace with one-click tool installation.
Multi-model support for 40+ AI providers and local models.
Knowledge Base for document uploads and RAG conversations.

🌎 Website Link: https://lobechat.com/

4. Reflex - Build powerful web apps with Python

Reflex is an AI-powered IDE that allows you to develop Python web applications in real-time, hence the developers can speed up their iteration process without the need for context-switching.

Key features & why to use it:

Real-time editing with instant project previews.
Syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and error detection.
Integrated terminal for seamless debugging workflows.

🌎 Website Link: https://build.reflex.dev/

5. Chroma - Power AI search with vector databases

Chroma is the embedding database for AI apps enabling support fast vector, full-text, and metadata searches for you to build RAG systems and have more time for your development.

Key features & why to use it:

Low-latency queries over billions of vectors with multi-tenancy.
Automatic scaling with object storage, up to 10x cheaper ops.
Integrates with LangChain, LlamaIndex, and embedding models seamlessly.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.trychroma.com/

6. Netron - Explore neural networks as diagrams

Netron displays the neural networks and ML models through the diagrams in formats like ONNX, PyTorch, and TensorFlow which assists developers in debugging and understanding the architectures.

Key features & why to use it:

Supports ONNX, TensorFlow Lite, Core ML, Keras, PyTorch formats.
Cross-platform: browser, desktop apps, Python pip install.
Exports model graphs as images for sharing and analysis.

🌎 Website Link: https://github.com/lutzroeder/netron

7. LiveKit - Add voice and video AI agents to your apps

LiveKit provides an open-source framework and cloud platform for real-time voice, video AI agents with STT, LLM, TTS integration, accelerating agent deployment.

Key features & why to use it:

Flexible STT/LLM/TTS mixing with telephony and WebRTC support.
Global scalable infrastructure for low-latency agent sessions.
Python/Node.js SDKs for quick voice agent prototyping.

🌎 Website Link: https://livekit.io/

8. Documentation.ai - Generate docs directly from your code

Documentation.ai automates the creation of technical documents from codebases using AI, streamlining developer workflows and ensuring up-to-date references efficiently.

Key features & why to use it:

Generates docs from code with NLP and OCR processing.
Integrates via REST API for seamless CI/CD pipelines.
Supports multiple formats with automated labeling and extraction.

🌎 Website Link: https://documentation.ai

Did you like the resources? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

Meet StackQL: The Future of AI Multi-Cloud Management with SQL 🤖⚡️

Madza — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 14:43:23 +0000

In the rapid software development lifecycle of today, the management and integration of different cloud services, APIs, and data sources can easily become a complicated and time-consuming task.

Developers are required to handle various tools, SDKs, and APIs simultaneously if they want to be able to automate workflows, query cloud infrastructure, or integrate AI capabilities into their applications.

StackQL is the innovative solution that provides a unified SQL-like interface to interact seamlessly with a great number of cloud providers and APIs, so you can focus on your product instead.

In this article, we will explore how StackQL can be used in conjunction with OpenAI and GitHub providers, and how you can improve workflow via AI-driven querying to boost repository analysis.

Through direct instructions and practical code snippets, you will learn how to install StackQL, set up the required providers, launch the MCP server and make queries to fetch desired data.

This hands-on experience will provide you with the skills to implement AI-powered cloud query automation in your projects, increasing the efficiency and capacity for ‍‌‍‍‌innovation for your future projects.

Thanks to the StackQL team for sponsoring this article!

Chapter 1: What is StackQL and Why Is It Useful?

StackQL‍‌‍‍‌ is an open-source cloud-service query engine, which provides developers an easy-to-understand way of using SQL to interact with diverse cloud APIs and AI providers.

Developers don't have to study the SDKs of each provider, handle complicated authentication, or struggle with poorly documented processes anymore.

Users can simply use StackQL to query, automate and orchestrate cloud and AI resources via the familiar SQL syntax from their local machines, CI pipelines, or custom applications.

The core value proposition of StackQL is to bring efficiency and simplicity to manage cloud infrastructure.

Some of the most useful features include:

Unified Access: Query multiple cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and AI services (OpenAI, Anthropic) through the same toolset and language.

SQL Querying for APIs: Utilize familiar SQL syntax to interact with RESTful APIs for services, thus eliminating the necessity of writing lengthy HTTP client code.

AI-Powered Automation: Leverage AI providers like OpenAI directly in your queries to generate text, summarize content, detect sentiment, or create code snippets.

Local and CI Integration: You can execute your queries locally or as continuous integration/deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, thereby enhancing DevOps ‍‌‍‍‌automation.

Chapter 2: How StackQL Works and Key Features

At its core, StackQL is a declarative query engine that converts SQL-like queries into API calls over multiple cloud providers and software services.

This design allows developers to abstract complex API specifications and instead interact with their infrastructure and services through a familiar and expressive query language.

StackQL‍‌‍‍‌ embraces the idea of providers; each provider is a representation of a cloud platform, a SaaS service, or an API ecosystem. In essence, a provider gathers a set of resources and actions that refer to the lowest-level APIs.

If you execute a query, the query will be broken down and the relevant API calls to the target provider will be generated. The calls will be executed one after another or side by side depending on the query logic.

The core working principles include:

Resource Hierarchy and Namespace: The main goal is to represent the cloud and API resources in one hierarchical structure, which would help users to access and query resources easily.

SQL-to-API Transpilation: The REST API calls are automatically generated from SQL queries so that authentication and response handling are done seamlessly and securely.

Provider Registry and OpenAPI Definitions: The usage of the latest OpenAPI registry enables the updating of API changes with the SQL schema mappings.

Multi-Cloud and Multi-Provider Access: Users can query any combination of cloud and SaaS providers such as AWS, GCP, Azure, GitHub, and AI ‍‌‍‍‌services in a single session.

Chapter 3: Installing StackQL on Your Machine

Getting started with StackQL begins with a straightforward installation process.

StackQL supports a variety of platforms, including macOS, Windows, Linux, and Docker, making it accessible for developers regardless of their preferred environment.

Installation on macOS

For macOS users, StackQL can be installed easily via Homebrew:

brew install stackql

Alternatively, you can tap the StackQL repository and then install:

brew tap stackql/tap && brew install stackql/tap/stackql

You can also download the signed PKG installer directly from their releases page and follow the installation prompts. Both ARM (Apple Silicon) and Intel architectures are supported.

Installation on Linux

There are multiple installation options for Linux, including precompiled binaries, curl, or by downloading ZIP archives for various architectures (amd64 and arm64).

curl -L https://bit.ly/stackql-zip -O
unzip stackql-zip

Ensure the binary is executable and accessible in your system PATH.

Installation on Windows

On Windows, you can install StackQL via Chocolatey:

choco install stackql

Alternatively, download the MSI installer or ZIP archive from the official StackQL releases and run the installer or extract the binaries.

Verifying the Installation

After installation, you can verify StackQL is installed correctly by running:

stackql --version

This should output the StackQL version string, confirming a successful setup.

This installation process sets the foundation for interacting with StackQL’s powerful SQL interface and AI integrations, which we will configure next.

Chapter 4: Setting Up Keys and Pulling Providers

StackQL supports over 25 commonly used providers in various areas.

Those include cloud, data & analytics, identity & security, monitoring & observability, DevOps, and AI & data science.

For this tutorial, we will need to configure OpenAI and GitHub providers.

Step 1: Set Your OpenAI API Key

StackQL recognizes the OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable to authenticate API requests to OpenAI.

You need to obtain your API key from the OpenAI dashboard and set it in your local environment.

For example, on macOS or Linux:

export OPENAI_API_KEY="your_openai_api_key_here"

Or on Windows PowerShell:

setx OPENAI_API_KEY "your_openai_api_key_here"

Once set, StackQL will be able to make authenticated requests to OpenAI using the exported token.

Step 2: Set Your GitHub API Token

StackQL uses the GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable for authenticating API requests to GitHub.

You need to generate a personal access token (PAT) from your GitHub account with the necessary permissions and set it in your local environment.

For macOS or Linux:

export GITHUB_TOKEN="your_personal_access_token_here"

Or on Windows PowerShell:

setx GITHUB_TOKEN "your_personal_access_token_here"

Once set, StackQL will be able to make authenticated requests to GitHub using the exported token.

Step 3: Pull the OpenAI Provider Registry

Start by pulling the OpenAI provider from StackQL’s registry:

REGISTRY PULL openai;

This command imports the latest available version of the OpenAI provider, which we will use to perform repository data analysis.

The OpenAI provider includes support for over 50 resources, enabling interactions with chat, completions, embedings, fine tuning and many more.

Step 4: Pull the GitHub Provider Registry

Next, pull the GitHub provider from StackQL’s registry:

REGISTRY PULL github;

This command imports the latest GitHub provider, which enables you to interact with GitHub services such as repositories, releases, issues, pull requests, and more.

The GitHub provider supports various resources and API endpoints that we will be using when fetching data from the GitHub repositories.

Chapter 5: Integrating the StackQL MCP server

We will be integrating the StackQL MCP server inside GitHub Copilot.

To achieve this, we will first need to configure both the Copilot chat and the MCP server itself.

Step 1: Open the GitHub Copilot chat

Click on the Copilot icon at the top bar of VS Code and select the “Open Chat“ option.

This should open the GitHub Copilot chat window on the right side of the screen by default.

Step 2: Configure the Copilot

On the very bottom of the Chat window, make sure to check that the Copilot is in the Agent mode.

Click on the dropdown next to the chat mode to select which of the LLM models you want to use.

Depending on whether or not you are in paid mode, you can pick between dozens of models, with the latest ones providing the more advanced and precise outputs.

Step 3: Integrating the StackQL MCP

Click on the configure icon at the bottom of the chat window, and it should bring up the menu with all the built-in agents that are available.

We will integrate a new server, so click on the “Add MCP server“ to start the setup guide and pick the Command (stdio) server type.

In the next step, provide the command you want to execute to start the server.

Give the server a name like "StackQL MCP" or some other name that will help you to better identify it.

Finally, open the tools list via the configuration settings again and notice the StackQL MCP server has been successfully installed.

Step 4: Test the configuration and MCP server

First, open the terminal and run the server via the following command:

stackql mcp --mcp.server.type=stdio

This will launch StackQL as an MCP server using the standard input/output (stdio) for communication.

This enables AI agents and assistants to interact with cloud infrastructure by sending queries and commands to StackQL through the MCP interface.

Let’s check if OpenAI and GitHub providers are configured and the server recognizes them.

Ask to show the providers in the Copilot input field. It will execute an SQL-like statement in StackQL that lists all available cloud service providers configured in the StackQL environment.

This indicates that the server is working as expected and allows you to see which providers are accessible for querying or managing through StackQL.

From here, you can start composing queries against your configured cloud and AI providers, and you can now integrate advanced AI capabilities directly into your StackQL-powered workflows.

Chapter 6: Fetch specific data via StackQL queries

In this section, we will test a few StackQL queries to see how you can fetch the data from GitHub.

Using the StackQL query approach to pull the data is very useful if you want specific info and be sure that no extra data fields are returned, reducing the API usage and improving response speed.

We will use the TypeScript repository as a test data source for this tutorial, but you can use whatever repository you want, including your own.

Also, we will maximize the Copilot window so the outputs are easier to read and fit in the viewport.

1. Repository Health Metrics

This query fetches key health indicators, including stars, forks, and open issues count, giving crucial insights into the repository's vitality.

These metrics help developers decide whether to adopt TypeScript for their projects and assess the responsiveness of the maintainer team.

SELECT name, full_name, description, stargazers_count, forks_count, open_issues_count,
       watchers_count, created_at, updated_at, default_branch
FROM   github.repos.details
WHERE  owner = 'microsoft' AND repo = 'TypeScript';

Output:

2. Recent Open Issues Analysis

This query retrieves the eight most recently opened issues in the TypeScript repository, helping developers quickly understand current problems and feature requests.

The labels field provides additional context about issue categorization, making it easy for contributors to find issues that match their expertise.

SELECT number, title, state, created_at, labels
FROM   github.issues.issues
WHERE  owner = 'microsoft' AND repo = 'TypeScript' AND state = 'open'
ORDER  BY created_at DESC LIMIT  8;

Output:

3. Pull Request Activity Analysis

This query retrieves the most recent open pull requests, showing active development work and pending contributions.

It helps developers understand current development priorities and identify stale PRs that might need severe attention.

SELECT number, title, state, created_at, updated_at, user
FROM   github.pulls.pull_requests
WHERE  owner = 'microsoft' AND repo = 'TypeScript' AND state = 'open'
ORDER  BY created_at DESC LIMIT  5;

Output:

4. Repository Contributors Analysis

This query identifies the top contributors based on commit count, helping developers know whose code reviews to value most and who shapes the project's architecture.

A diverse and active contributor base indicates a healthy open-source project with a lower risk of abandonment, which is crucial for long-term sustainability.

SELECT login, contributions
FROM   github.repos.contributors
WHERE  owner = 'microsoft' AND repo = 'TypeScript'
ORDER  BY contributions DESC LIMIT  10;

Output:

5. Recent Repository Releases

This query fetches the most recent TypeScript releases, including version tags and detailed changelog information.

Tracking releases helps teams plan upgrade cycles and assess whether new versions address their specific pain points.

SELECT name, tag_name, created_at, published_at, body
FROM   github.repos.releases
WHERE  owner = 'microsoft' AND repo = 'TypeScript'
ORDER  BY published_at DESC LIMIT  7;

Output:

6. Repo Status and Management Structure

This query returns the status and the structure of the project management properties.

It helps developers understand the stack composition and evaluate compatibility or integration priorities when extending or maintaining the project.

SELECT name, full_name, license, visibility, private, 
       has_issues, has_projects, has_wiki, has_pages, has_discussions,
       archived, disabled, created_at, updated_at
FROM github.repos.details 
WHERE owner = 'microsoft' AND repo = 'TypeScript';

Output:

Chapter 7: Use natural prompts for advanced analysis

Now, let’s test how the StackQL MCP server allows us to work with natural prompts.

This approach is very useful if you want to fetch data and perform analysis on it, since you can describe your desired result in more detail, compared to using just bare StackQL queries.

Keep in mind that this approach often requires the Copilot to run multiple queries, resulting in more API usage and being slower. But the output is more advanced and includes analysis.

We will be using React and NextJS repositories as test data sources for this section, but you can use whatever repositories you want, including your own.

Also, the Copilot window will stay maximized so the outputs are easier to read and fit in the viewport.

1. Issue Resolution Time Comparison

This prompt compares the average time it takes to close issues in React vs Next.js repositories, helping teams understand which project has more efficient issue resolution workflows.

It provides insights into team responsiveness and project maintenance velocity.

Compare the issue resolution efficiency between facebook/react and vercel/next.js 
by analyzing the last 20 closed issues from each repository. 
Calculate the average time between creation and closure, 
identify the fastest and slowest resolved issues, 
and determine which repository has better issue turnaround times.

Output:

2. Fork and Star Growth Momentum

This prompt reveals which project is gaining more community traction and developer interest by comparing engagement metrics.

Understanding momentum helps developers decide which ecosystem is growing faster and may have better long-term support.

Compare the community engagement metrics between facebook/react and vercel/next.js 
by examining their current star counts, fork counts, watcher counts, and open issues count. 
Calculate engagement ratios and determine which repository shows stronger community momentum.

Output:

3. Issue Label Distribution and Organization

This prompt examines how each project categorizes and organizes its issues through labeling systems, revealing the project management sophistication.

Well-organized labels indicate mature issue triage processes and make it easier for contributors to find relevant work.

Analyze the issue labeling strategies of facebook/react and vercel/next.js 
by examining the labels used across their open issues. 
Identify the most common label categories, compare how each project organizes their issues, 
and determine which repository has a more comprehensive labeling system for issue management.

Output:

4. Repository Update Recency and Activity

This prompt compares how recently each repository was updated and pushed to, indicating current maintenance activity levels.

Recent activity signals active development and suggests the project is being well-maintained and responsive to community needs.

Compare the recent activity and maintenance patterns between facebook/react and vercel/next.js
by analyzing their last push dates, last update timestamps, 
creation dates, and default branches. 
Determine which repository shows more recent development activity 
and calculate how many days since the last update for each.

Output:

5. Issue Creation Velocity Trends

This prompt analyzes the rate at which new issues are being created in both repositories to understand user engagement and potential problem discovery rates.

High issue creation velocity can indicate either active usage with bugs being found, or growing adoption with feature requests.

Examine the issue creation velocity for facebook/react and vercel/next.js 
by analyzing the 20 most recently created issues in each repository. 
Calculate the average daily issue creation rate, 
identify peak activity periods based on creation timestamps, 
and determine which project has higher user engagement through issue reporting.

Output:

6. Issue Title Sentiment and Complexity Analysis

This prompt uses AI to analyze the sentiment and complexity of issue titles, revealing whether issues tend to be bug reports, feature requests, or questions.

Understanding issue sentiment helps gauge user satisfaction and the types of challenges each project faces.

Analyze the sentiment and complexity of issue titles from facebook/react and vercel/next.js 
by fetching 20 recent open issues from each repository. 
Use AI to categorize each issue title by sentiment (positive, negative, neutral), 
identify common themes or patterns, 
and determine which repository has more complex or challenging issues based on title analysis.

Output:

7. Cross-Repository Issue Topic Clustering

This prompt identifies common topics and themes across issues in both repositories to find overlapping concerns or unique challenges.

Topic clustering reveals what problems are universal to React frameworks versus specific to each implementation.

Perform topic clustering analysis on issues from facebook/react and vercel/next.js 
by examining 25 recent issues from each repository. 
Group issues by common themes or topics mentioned in their titles, 
identify overlapping concerns between both repositories, 
and highlight unique issue categories specific to each project.

Output:

Conclusion and final thoughts

Besed on the practical review in this article, it’s safe to say that StackQL‍‌‍‍‌ changes the developer workflows by bringing together cloud and AI interfaces, which means that developers can now use natural language-driven solutions through providers like OpenAI to get their work done faster and more efficiently.

By integrating AI models directly into SQL queries, StackQL transforms routine operations into intelligent, context-aware actions that simplify and has a potential to accelerate anything you can think of.

The AI providers in StackQL fully abstract all complex HTTP calls (so you dont have to write them yourself), request signing, and response parsing behind simple SQL queries, making AI and cloud operations easy to understand and accessible from one platform.

This setup enables a huge potential for developers to seamlessly blend AI capabilities like resource monitoring, management, and powerful analysis for future optimization for their apps into their cloud and developer workflows.

As AI becomes more and more central to modern workflows every day, mastering StackQL’s AI integrations will surely position you at the forefront of efficient, intelligent software engineering.

Hopefully, this article was useful to you and you learned a few new ideas that you can apply in your future projects. Thanks a lot for reading, and best of luck with building cool stuff!

Did you like the article? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

9 Lesser-Known AI Productivity Tools You Wish You Knew Earlier 🔥⚡️

Madza — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:47:14 +0000

AI productivity tools are constantly changing the way we work, transforming hours of manual effort into minutes via smart automation solutions for daily tasks.

However, with thousands of options being released every single day, the task of finding those few which really save the time of the user can be quite overwhelming.

Here I have selected 9 of my favorite lesser-known AI tools that I have recently come across and that could be just right for improving your productivity workflow.

These tools are spanning different areas of design, writing, brainstorming, and content creation and include AI presentation makers, visual note-takers, image generators, music creators, and more.

Each includes a summary, image preview to give you an insight, most useful features, and a direct website link for quick exploration on the go.

Let’s dive in, and I hope these tools will be useful for you!

1. AiPPT – Make stunning presentations with AI

AiPPT‍‌‍‍‌ is an AI-powered tool that creates presentations from native language text prompts, files, or links, taking care of the design, images, and even writing the content.

It allows to focus on messaging rather than formatting, iterate quickly on ideas, collaborate seamlessly, and produce high-quality decks for meetings or pitches without needing design expertise.

Some of the most awesome features:

⚡️ One-click slide generation: Turn a text description, a PDF, TXT, or Word file imported from your computer, or paste an URL to craft an eye-catching presentations within a few seconds.

🤖 Auto-outline creator: AI-driven outline generator helps you organize your material in a logical way and thus saves you the whole planning and formatting time of several hours.

✂️ Easy editing & export: After the generation you have full control to modify the slides as per your needs and save them as PPT, PDF, or share links for easy collaboration with your team.

🎨 Built-in image generation: Add context-based AI-created graphics to a presentation with the help of Nano Banana Pro without the need for any designing skills.

✨ Lots of templates for inspiration: Explore a huge gallery of 200k+ professionally designed presentation templates to gain some inspiration for new layouts and styles.

Tired of the grind of manual presentation creation that drains your energy and productivity? Try AiPPT now and turn raw ideas into engaging, ready-to-present slides faster than ever!

🌎 Website Link: https://www.aippt.com/

Thanks to the AiPPT team for sponsoring this article!

2. Relume - Build AI wireframes and components

Relume‍‌‍‍‌ helps web design to be less time-consuming by facilitating the creation of wireframes and UI components from prompts, thus making the designers able to work out their ideas faster.

Key features & why to use it:

Automatically generated site maps and wireframes by AI in a matter of seconds.
A collection of more than 1,000 modifiable React components for Figma.
Easy export to Webflow or other ‍‌‍‍‌builders.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.relume.io/

3. Visily - Create modern-looking UI prototypes

Visily‍‌‍‍‌ utilizes AI to transform hand-drawn figures, pictures, or writings into user-friendly mockups, thus saving time in the design process and making collaboration between teams effective and easy.

Key features & why to use it:

Turning a screenshot into a design and a sketch into a prototype.
AI-generated flowcharts and user flows automatically.
Real-time collaboration and component libraries.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.visily.ai/

4. Heptabase - Manage all your knowledge visually

Heptabase‍‌‍‍‌ visually displays the notes in a graph database which is very convenient to research and link new ideas as you don't spend time doing information retrieval and synthesis.

Key features & why to use it:

Non-linear notes with whiteboards, cards, and graph views.
AI-powered tagging, querying, and content generation.
PDF annotation and task management integration.

🌎 Website Link: https://heptabase.com/

5. Ideogram - Generate text-to-image visuals

Ideogram.ai generates photorealistic images and graphics from text prompts, so a user can produce marketing visuals or designs in no time even without artistic skills.

Key features & why to use it:

Production of realistic images with style tags like product, poster, nature, etc.
Remix existing images and adjust aspect ratios easily.
High-resolution outputs for professional use.

🌎 Website Link: https://ideogram.ai/

6. Suno - Create AI-generated music tracks

Suno transforms text prompts into complete songs including lyrics and vocals so the custom audio production for videos, podcasts, or content creation becomes way faster.

Key features & why to use it:

Supports a wide variety of genres with studio-quality sound output.
Generates complete tracks like they would be produced by a professional producer.
Instant downloads and commercial use licensing.

🌎 Website Link: https://suno.com/

7. Napkin - Turn text into graphs and diagrams

Napkin.ai converts pasted text into editable diagrams, infographics, and charts, streamlining creation and improving the perception of a wide array of documents and social content.

Key features & why to use it:

Automatically generates the most suitable visuals without a long chain of complex prompts.
Fully editable icons, connectors, colors, and fonts to match your requirements and style.
Share your work easily with others through PPT, PNG, and PDF exports.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.napkin.ai/

8. MindMeister - Build customizable mind maps

MindMeister helps users to organize ideas, introduce processes, and build teams visually by using interactive canvases which facilitate brainstorming and the organization of complex projects.

Key features & why to use it:

Dragging and dropping topics along with real-time team collaboration.
Add notes, images, tasks, and use presentation mode.
Secure sharing compliant with GDPR standards.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.mindmeister.com/

9. Type - Your AI assistant for long-form content

Type.ai‍‌‍‍‌ is an editing tool that works with long-form content such as novels and research papers, and it is able to speed up the writing process through its real-time correction and refinement features.

Key features & why to use it:

Grammar fixes, tone adjustments, and smart replies instantly.
Reduces editing cycles for faster professional drafts.
Great for writers in different languages who want to be productive ‍‌‍‍‌globally.

🌎 Website Link: https://type.ai/

Did you like the resources? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

Introducing WorkOS: Add SSO, Magic Auth, or Social Auth in Minutes ⚡️🔐

Madza — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 14:42:40 +0000

Adding enterprise features to your SaaS application can be the difference between landing major B2B clients and losing them to competitors.

However, building features like Single Sign-On (SSO), Magic Auth, Social Auth, and MFA from scratch typically takes months of development time and requires deep security expertise.

WorkOS solves this problem by providing a developer-friendly platform with pre-built APIs for adding enterprise-ready auth features to your applications.

In this guide, we'll build a demo application using NextJS that demonstrates how each WorkOS authentication feature works in practice. You'll learn how to:

Set up enterprise SSO for secure login
Add passwordless Magic Auth
Sign up using Social platform credentials
Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Monitor security with WorkOS Radar (real-time threat detection)

By the end, you'll have working code examples you can adapt for your own applications!

Thanks to the WorkOS team for sponsoring this article!

Chapter 1: Understanding WorkOS and Its Core Features

WorkOS is a platform that handles enterprise authentication and user management for your application.

Think of it as "Stripe for enterprise features" - you integrate once, and WorkOS handles all the complexity of working with different identity providers, HR systems, and security protocols.

It comes with lots of useful features:

Single Sign-On (SSO) enables users to log in using their company's identity provider, such as Okta, Azure AD, or Google Workspace, eliminating separate passwords.
Magic Auth provides passwordless authentication through email verification codes, providing better security and a smoother user experience.
Social Auth allows users to sign up using their existing Google, Microsoft, Apple, or GitHub accounts.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) provides an extra layer of security through authenticator apps, which enterprise customers are increasingly requiring.
WorkOS Radar is a useful security feature, a real-time threat detection system that monitors every authentication attempt, analyzing login locations, IP reputation, and much more.

Chapter 2: Setting up NextJS and .env Variables

Step 1: Create a new NextJS app

pnpm create next-app@latest workos-demo

Choose these options for the CLI wizard:

TypeScript: Yes
ESLint: Yes
Tailwind CSS: Yes
App Router: Yes
Default import alias: No

cd workos-demo

Step 2: Add WorkOS to the project

pnpm add @workos-inc/authkit-nextjs

Step 3: Set Up Environment Variables

Create .env.local:

WORKOS_CLIENT_ID=your_workos_client_id
WORKOS_API_KEY=your_workos_api_key

Get your Client ID and API key from dashboard.workos.com.

Step 4: Create a simple Landing Page

Replace app/page.tsx:

export default async function Home() {
  return (
    <div className="min-h-screen bg-black flex items-center justify-center p-6">
      <div className="text-center space-y-10 max-w-2xl">

        <div className="space-y-4">
          <h1 className="text-5xl font-bold text-white tracking-tight">
            Auth Demo App
          </h1>
          <p className="text-xl text-neutral-400">
            Email + Password, Passwordless, Social Auth and MFA made easy with WorkOS.
          </p>
        </div>

        <div className="flex gap-4 justify-center">
          <a
            href="/login"
            className="px-8 py-3 bg-white text-black rounded-lg font-semibold hover:bg-neutral-200 transition-colors"
          >
            Sign In
          </a>
          <a
            href="/signup"
            className="px-8 py-3 bg-neutral-900 text-white border border-neutral-800 rounded-lg font-semibold hover:bg-neutral-800 transition-colors"
          >
            Sign Up
          </a>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
}

This code renders a centered, dark-themed homepage with a title, description, and styled "Sign In" and "Sign Up" buttons for an authentication demo app.

Step 5: Start your developer server:

pnpm dev

Visit http://localhost:3000 to see your landing page.

Chapter 3: Create Auth Routes and a Protected Page

AuthKit makes authentication incredibly simple. Let's build the login and sign-up pages and create a protected page that will only be accessible after successful authentication.

Step 1: Create a sign-up route

Create app/signup/route.tsx:

import { getSignUpUrl } from '@workos-inc/authkit-nextjs';
import { redirect } from 'next/navigation';

export const GET = async () => {
    const signUpUrl = await getSignUpUrl();
    return redirect(signUpUrl);
};

Step 2: Create a login route

Create app/login/route.tsx:

import { getSignInUrl } from '@workos-inc/authkit-nextjs';
import { redirect } from 'next/navigation';

export const GET = async () => {
    const signInUrl = await getSignInUrl();

    return redirect(signInUrl);
};

Step 3: Create a protected dashboard

Create app/dashboard/page.tsx:

import { withAuth, signOut } from '@workos-inc/authkit-nextjs';

export default async function Dashboard() {
    const { user } = await withAuth({ ensureSignedIn: true });

    return (
        <div className="min-h-screen bg-black p-8">
            <div className="max-w-4xl mx-auto">
                <div className="bg-neutral-900 border border-neutral-800 rounded-lg p-6 mb-6">
                    <h1 className="text-2xl font-bold text-white mb-2">Dashboard</h1>
                    <p className="text-neutral-400">
                        Welcome, {user.firstName || user.email}!
                    </p>
                </div>

                <div className="bg-neutral-900 border border-neutral-800 rounded-lg p-6 mb-6">
                    <h2 className="text-xl font-semibold text-white mb-4">Your Profile</h2>
                    <div className="space-y-2 text-sm text-neutral-400">
                        <p><span className="text-neutral-300">Email:</span> {user.email}</p>
                    </div>
                </div>

                <form
                    action={async () => {
                        'use server';
                        await signOut();
                    }}
                    className="mt-6"
                >
                    <button
                        type="submit"
                        className="px-6 py-2 rounded-lg font-semibold bg-[#ff6347] text-white hover:bg-[#e5533c] transition-colors cursor-pointer"
                    >
                        Sign Out
                    </button>
                </form>
            </div>
        </div >
    );
}

This code displays a protected dashboard page that greets the authenticated user, displays a user email to test access to the user object, and renders a sign-out button to end the session.

With just a couple of withAuth() and signOut() functions, you have:

Protected routes that require authentication
Access to user information
Secure log-out functionality

Chapter 4: Add Middleware and Auth Callback

In this chapter, you'll set up the essential WorkOS integration steps to enable secure authentication and session management in your Next.js app.

Step 1: Add AuthKit middleware

Create middleware.ts in your project root:

import { authkitMiddleware } from '@workos-inc/authkit-nextjs';

export default authkitMiddleware();

This middleware automatically handles session management for your entire app.

Step 2: Add AuthKit callback route

Create app/callback/route.ts:

import { handleAuth } from '@workos-inc/authkit-nextjs';

export const GET = handleAuth({ returnPathname: '/dashboard' });

This code sets up the callback route so that, after authentication, WorkOS processes the response and redirects the user to the dashboard.

Step 3: Configure WorkOS redirects

Go to WorkOS Dashboard → Redirects and configure the following settings:

Add http://localhost:3000/callback as an allowed redirect URI
Set http://localhost:3000 as an app home page URL
Edit http://localhost:3000/login as a sign-in endpoint
Edit http://localhost:3000/login as a sign-out redirect endpoint

Chapter 5: Authenticate via Single Sign-On (SSO)

Single Sign-On allows users to authenticate using their company's identity provider. In this chapter, we will take a look at how you can use it in your auth workflow.

First, navigate to the WorkOS dashboard and select the Organizations section.

You will notice that WorkOS has already created a test organization with the example.com domain that you can use to try out the SSO feature via the Test IdP.

To try it out in practice, check if your developer server is still running; if not, run pnpm dev again.

Open a new tab on your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000/login.

Provide a test email address ending with the Test IdP domain.

Hit continue, and you should be presented with the SSO account sign-up form.

This is the WorkOS test identity provider screen, where you can simulate an SSO login by entering user details (email, first name, last name, and group).

If you check back in the Users section, you can see that the user has been successfully created.

Your users from that domain will now automatically use SSO instead of password authentication.

You can also add multiple SSO connections for different organizations. Navigate to the Organizations section, select Create Organization, and provide the organization name and domain.

Chapter 6: Sign in via Email + Password

In this section, we'll sign up a new user through the traditional email + password method and see how the account is created and managed in the WorkOS dashboard.

Go to your sign-up page: http://localhost:3000/signup.

Provide your email address and a password.

Hit Continue, and you will be successfully signed up.

Navigate to the Users section on the WorkOS dashboard and notice the user has been created.

You can further customize the password settings to match your specific requirements.

Navigate to Authentication → Methods → Email + Password → Manage.

Chapter 7: Setting up Magic Auth (Passwordless)

In this section, you'll enable and test Magic Auth to allow users to sign in securely without a password by using a one-time code sent to their email.

Make sure it’s enabled in the WorkOS settings: Authentication → Methods → Magic Auth → Enable.

Go to your sign-up page: http://localhost:3000/signup.

Fill out the required fields and provide your email address.

Notice that in the next step, you will not be required to create the password.

Instead, check your inbox, and you will receive the verification code for the signup.

Finally, enter the received code, and you will be successfully logged in.

Same as before, if you check the User section, you will see that the new user has been created.

Chapter 8: Testing Social Authentication

If you do not want to sign in via SSO, email + password, or magic auth, you can also select to sign up using any of the most commonly used social credentials.

By default, four of the major providers are enabled.

You can customize this in Authentication → Providers and enable the ones you like.

Navigate to the sign-up page: http://localhost:3000/signup.

Instead of providing the email or the name, or surname, select one of the social providers.

Depending on the social provider you picked, you will be asked to log in to your social account.

If the login was successful, you will see that the new user has been created.

You can also further customize each of the providers if you would like to create an auth with social credentials with a custom client ID and secret key.

Chapter 9: Enabling Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring a second verification method (like an authenticator app).

Enable MFA in Authentication → Features → Multi-Factor Auth.

Navigate to http://localhost:3000/login.

Fill out the login information as you normally do and try to sign in.

This time, you will be notified to complete the MFA.

You can use auth apps like Passwords, Google Authenticator, or Microsoft Authenticator.

Open the auth app on your phone, scan the QR code, and enter the code provided by the app.

Then check the Users section and notice the user has been successfully created.

Chapter 10: Check the Auth Requests via Radar

WorkOS Radar is an automatic threat detection system that monitors authentication attempts in real-time.

It analyzes login patterns, IP reputation, device fingerprints, and velocity to identify suspicious activity without any configuration on your part.

To see it in action, go to your WorkOS Dashboard and select the Radar section.

Return to the Radar dashboard to see the authentication event logged.

Scroll down, and you'll also see details about each login attempt, including IP address, location, domain names that were used, and users that triggered the events.

For testing purposes, Radar typically marks normal development logins as low risk.

In production, it becomes more valuable as it learns your users' typical behavior patterns and can identify anomalies like impossible travel or credential stuffing attacks.

Chapter 11: Access User Authorization Details

User profile details

When a user authenticates through WorkOS, you receive their essential profile information, including email address, first name, last name, and a unique user ID.

WorkOS also tracks whether the user has verified their email and enrolled in multi-factor authentication, giving you complete visibility into their account security status.

Login session data

WorkOS manages secure, encrypted sessions automatically through AuthKit's middleware, eliminating the need for manual token handling or cookie configuration.

Each session includes the user's authentication state, organization membership (if applicable), and session metadata like creation time and expiration.

Authentication event details

WorkOS tracks authentication events in real-time, including sign-ins, sign-ups, password changes, and MFA enrollments.

These events are automatically logged to your WorkOS dashboard, where you can monitor user activity, investigate security incidents, and ensure compliance with audit requirements.

Chapter 12: Customize the Design to Your Liking

Signup, login, and password reset pages

WorkOS provides an authentication UI that you can fully customize to match your brand identity.

In the WorkOS Dashboard under the Branding section, you can upload your company logo, customize colors for buttons and backgrounds, adjust fonts, and much more for advanced styling.

Emails

All transactional emails sent by WorkOS, including verification codes, password resets, and magic auth links, can be customized to reflect your brand.

In the WorkOS Dashboard under the Branding section, you can configure the email templates with your brand colors, from logos, favicons, and backgrounds to fonts and links.

Conclusion

Building enterprise-ready authentication doesn't have to be complicated. With WorkOS, you've seen how quickly you can add professional authentication features to your Next.js application in minutes.

By leveraging a simple API, you've implemented secure user authentication, passwordless Magic Auth, multi-factor authentication, and real-time threat detection with Radar, all with minimal code.

The beauty of WorkOS lies in its simplicity. You don't need to worry about managing tokens, configuring cookies, or handling complex OAuth flows.

It handles the heavy lifting while giving you the flexibility to customize the authentication experience to match your brand and scales with you as your app grows.

You can now focus on building features that make your product unique, knowing that your authentication layer is secure, compliant, and battle-tested! Happy building and hope this was useful!

Did you like the article? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

9 Essential Developer Tools You Should be Exploring Right Now ⚡️🔎

Madza — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 13:48:06 +0000

Modern developer tools have become fundamental components which enhance coding operations while shortening the duration needed to finish projects.

However the curation and selection process for developer tools that might be useful in the practice can feel as a daunting task because numerous platforms and utilities exist.

In this article I’ve curated 9 of my recent favorite developer tools which help developers create applications through advanced authentication systems, headless CMS backends, visual website builders, API SDK generators and much more.

These tools help developers save time while reducing obstacles to work on developing robust software.

All the tools provide brief descriptions along with essential features, workflow image snaphots and direct access links which enable you to evaluate their suitability for your technology infrastructure.

Let’s dive in and discover how these essential tools can improve your coding workflow.

1. Depot – Build Docker Images up to 40X Faster

Depot is a powerful remote container build platform which speeds up Docker builds through its cloud-based infrastructure with built-in caching and native multi-architecture support and automated CI/CD system integration.

The platform uses remote builders to replace slow local builds and CI runners which enables the resources of your machine to remain available while cutting down build duration for faster deployment and development cycles.

Some of the most useful features include:

🤖 Agent sandbox environments: Run AI coding agents such as Claude Code in safe, separated Depot sandboxes that are fully Docker supported. These AI tools can thus develop and verify code in a secure environment without any risk for your local machine.

📦 Docker Bake support: Speed up highly complex multi-target builds by using native Docker Bake support. You can continue to use your current build definitions while taking advantage of Depot's speed for complex build matrices and parallel ‍‌‍‍‌workflows.

🔐 Private resource access via Tailscale: Connect Depot builders to your private networks, databases, and internal registries through Tailscale integration, enabling secure builds that need access to protected resources.

🔽 Self-hosted option with Depot Managed: Deploy the entire Depot infrastructure in your own AWS account for complete control over security, compliance, and data sovereignty while keeping all the speed benefits.

📊 Receive detailed analytics and insights: Run multiple builds concurrently with intelligent queueing and get detailed analytics on build performance, cache hit rates, and cost breakdowns to optimize.

Want to boost your Docker build workflow and save time on every container build? Try Depot today and experience faster, and more resource efficient container builds without complexity!

🌎 Website Link: https://depot.dev/

Thanks to the Depot team for sponsoring this article!

2. Builder.io - Make modern web experiences with AI

Builder is an AI-powered visual development platform that lets you provide direct prompts to create both the editable design and the code. Integrates well with Figma, so you can use your existing workflow.

Key features & why to use it:

AI generates production code from Figma design or from the prompt you provide.
Visual editor lets you easily preview the output and make any changes you want.
Integrates with other platforms such as GitHub for seamless deployment.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.builder.io/

3. Webflow - Design and launch websites visually

Webflow is a powerful website design tool that allows designers and developers to create responsive, real-world-ready sites in no time without the need for coding.

Key features & why to use it:

Visual designer combines design and CMS management into a single platform.
Automatically generates clean, semantic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Launch and optimize site easily with the help of integrated hosting and SEO tools.

🌎 Website Link: https://webflow.com/

4. Medusa - Develop headless e-commerce apps

Medusa is a headless e-commerce platform that is open source and developer-friendly. It lets developers create the backend of scalable and customizable online stores quickly, while integrating with modern frontends.

Key features & why to use it:

API-first architecture that is fully customizable for various commerce needs.
Supports multiple commonly used payment providers out of the box.
The open-source nature of the platform ensures extensibility and control over your backend.

🌎 Website Link: https://medusajs.com/

5. Clerk - Manage user authentication

Clerk is an all-around solution for the authentication needs of modern web apps. It offers a set of customizable, ready-to-use UI components and security features that are advanced yet easy to implement.

Key features & why to use it:

Passwordless authentication, magic links, and social login support.
Built-in bot detection and brute-force attack prevention.
Comes with multi-tenancy, role management, and session lifecycle control.

🌎 Website Link: https://clerk.com/

6. Payload - Create CMS and backend systems

Payload is an open-source backend CMS for NextJS that provides developers with full control over content and application data, while at the same time, gives marketers the power of a user-friendly editing interface.

Key features & why to use it:

Your entire Payload config can be installed with a single line into any existing NextJS app.
Fully customizable schemas and a powerful API for content management.
Developer-friendly open-source architecture with full control.

🌎 Website Link: https://payloadcms.com/

7. Fern - Generate SDKs and API docs

Fern simplifies the process of SDK generation and the creation of accompanying documentation, thus providing clean, and complete API docs which in turn, leads to enhanced developer experience and decreased engineering work.

Key features & why to use it:

Supports multiple languages like TypeScript, Python, Go, Java, C#, etc.
Continuous SDK updates are integrated into CI/CD pipelines.
Comes with useful features OAuth 2.0, server-sent events, and auto-pagination.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.buildwithfern.com/

8. OpenPanel - Host a server control panel

OpenPanel‍‌‍‍‌ is a lightweight control panel that enables humans to control a web server and services in a very simple and straightforward manner with no need for complicated configurations.

Key features & why to use it:

An easy-to-use UI for managing websites, databases, and mail servers.
Facilitates SSL certificate automation and backup scheduling.
Its design focuses on ease of installation and minimal resource utilization.

🌎 Website Link: https://openpanel.com/

9. Grafana - Visualize app metrics and logs

Grafana is an open-source project for monitoring and observability. It lets you to build dashboards that allow easy understanding of system metrics, logs, and traces, and even in real-time.

Key features & why to use it:

Integrates with diverse data sources for unified monitoring.
Comes with options for representation of the data, e.g. graphs, heatmaps, or alerts.
It can be used independently of scale, like in a small environment or a big enterprise ‍‌‍‍‌environment.

🌎 Website Link: https://grafana.com/

Did you like the resources? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

8 Useful Coding Tools That Will Instantly Improve Your Dev Game 🔥🚀

Madza — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 13:27:22 +0000

Having‍‌‍‍‌ the right tools in a fast-paced software development environment can change your entire workflow, increase your output, and shorten the development time.

There is a wide range of developer tools to choose from, and it might be quite a time consuming challenge to figure out which ones would really be of practical use to your daily coding workflow.

In this article, I have listed 8 of my favorite developer tools that cover various needs from speeding up Docker builds, user authentication management, documentation automation and much more.

Each tool comes with a brief explanation, main features, image snippets and direct links for quick reference to help you evaluate how it could come handy to your projects.

If you are a solo developer or a member of a team, I hope that these tools will improve your coding experience and make you work more efficiently. Let's dive in!

1. Depot – Turbocharge the speed of Docker builds

Depot‍‌‍‍‌ transforms the creation of Docker images and CI/CD pipelines through a build platform that offers rapid, emulation-free multi-architecture builds (up to 40x speed) with smart autoscaling.

This supports your new or existing setup with multi-architecture container building and centralized cache management for fast development cycles and cost-saving for used resources.

Some of the most useful features for developers include:

🚀 Container Build Autoscaling: Scale your builds automatically over several BuildKit builders to handle a high concurrency level without delays, speeding up the whole pipeline process.

⚡ Distributed Remote Caching: Make use of and share cache layers that are reusable for the whole team and any CI provider, significantly reducing incremental build times.

🔍 Advanced observability: Have a deep insight of your build jobs with resource usage metrics and process-level logs, enabling faster optimization and troubleshooting.

🛠 Diversified Tooling Support: The environment is compatible with Bazel, Go, Gradle, Turborepo, sccache, Pants, and more, thus enabling faster builds in different ecosystems.

🌐 Multi-Architecture Native Builds: Create and cache images for different platforms (like Intel and ARM) directly without emulation, thus improving cross-platform ‍‌‍‍‌consistency.

Tired of inefficient builds slowing down your coding workflow? Get started with Depot and optimize your CI development pipelines to save time and ship faster!

🌎 Website Link: https://depot.dev/

Thanks to the Depot team for sponsoring this article!

2. Novu - Manage user notifications in real-time

Novu is a notification infrastructure that enables developers to straightforwardly orchestrate and manage in-app, email, SMS, and push notifications, thus enhancing communication workflows in apps.

Key features & why to use it:

Unified notification orchestration across multiple channels, handled from a single platform.
Easy-to-use and straightforward API and UI for designing notification flows.
Integration with popular third-party services for full control and customization.

🌎 Website Link: https://novu.co/

3. Bildr - Build stunning web applications visually

Bildr is a no-code/low-code platform, where users can visually develop complex web applications that would require a lengthy coding process, shortening the cycle from idea to deployment.

Key features & why to use it:

The drag-and-drop interface for quick and responsive app building.
Use logic and conditionals to handle any scenario, a toolkit for custom actions.
Launch web apps even if you don't know how to write frontend/backend code.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.bildr.com/

4. Lost Pixel - Perform visual regression testing

Lost Pixel is a visual regression testing platform that enables developers to find visual bugs quickly by the automatic tests of visual content in Storybook, Ladle, and application pages.

Key features & why to use it:

Visual regression testing in a browser of your choice (Chrome, Firefox, Safari).
Responsive tests running with different breakpoints and viewports.
Fast parallel test execution with retry and the handling of flaky tests.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.lost-pixel.com/

5. SuperTokens - Implement secure user authentication

SuperTokens is a developer-first authentication platform delivering customizable login flows and advanced session management to increase security and user control in applications.

Key features & why to use it:

Combine different authentication methods: passwordless, social, and multi-factor authentication.
Ready-to-use UI components and simple integration with frontend and backend SDKs.
Token theft detection and scalable session management ensure maximum security.

🌎 Website Link: https://supertokens.com/

6. Strapi - Build and manage your content models

Strapi is a headless CMS that helps developers to create data models, automatically generate APIs, and manage content in a flexible way while having full freedom of hosting and code.

Key features & why to use it:

Define custom data models and have instant API generated.
Enable AI features and easily integrate with popular frameworks.
Open source project with SOC 2 certification and GDPR compliance.

🌎 Website Link: https://strapi.io/

7. Beekeeper Studio - Work with SQL data in a modern GUI

Beekeeper Studio is an SQL editor and database manager that supports various SQL databases and comes with a clean UI and robust tools for data exploration and management.

Key features & why to use it:

Supports MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, SQL Server, and more.
Improved query writing with syntax highlighting, auto-complete, and AI Shell integration.
Data browsing like spreadsheets with easy import and export options.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.beekeeperstudio.io/

8. Mintlify - Automate your documentation writing

Mintlify automates the process of creating technical documentation by converting codebases into live docs with AI, thus developer productivity goes up and team collaboration improves.

Key features & why to use it:

Automatic docs creation by AI from code and comments.
Supports collaborative editing features and versioning for teams.
Fully customizable templates and simple integration with dev workflows.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.mintlify.com/

Did you like the resources? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

9 SaaS Tools for Indie Builders to Scale Fast and Make it Sell ⚡️💰

Madza — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 14:50:46 +0000

Scaling‍‌‍‍‌ your SaaS product quickly and making it successful is the dream of every indie builder.

However, to move from just having a great idea to actually building a scalable product, you need to make smart decisions and have the right kind of support.

The road leading to fast growth and an eventual safe exit can be quite intimidating if you do not have the right resources available and do not know where to look.

In this article I’ve manually handpicked 9 SaaS tools that are created specifically for the needs of indie builders who are eager to scale quickly and increase the product value.

These tools cover a wide spectrum of areas like automation, user engagement, infrastructure, and analytics thus they allow users to boost the growth, and make the product attractive to the buyers.

Along with each product description, you will find the main feature sets, image preiews and direct links that will help you decide how they can be incorporated in your builder’s tool stack.

Let’s explore the best resources to accelerate your SaaS journey and turn your project into a thriving business!

1. WorkOS - Simplify Auth and User Management

WorkOS is a platform that makes creating enterprise-ready features in your app easy by offering a set of combined APIs for Single Sign-On (SSO), directory synchronization (SCIM), multi-factor authentication, and audit logs.

The platform allows startups and indie builders to integrate their products with powerful and secure identity and access management features, thus improving the whole user management process and enabling a faster product launch.

Some of the most awesome features include:

🔐 Enterprise SSO support: Use a single unified API to connect any SAML or OIDC identity provider for an easy access throughout your whole application and set it up in minutes.

🧑‍💼 Full user and organization management: Define policy rules, allow multiple auth methods, and manage the user lifecycle using SCIM and HRIS integrations.

🎨 AuthKit UI & Passwordless login: Enable users to authenticate via a state-of-the-art, customizable UI using passwordless magic links and multi-factor authentication.

🚀 Admin Portal for IT admins: Offer customer IT teams a self-service identity and directory setup experience on your customer-branded portal, thus significantly reducing the onboarding time.

⚙️ Developer-friendly APIs & SDKs: Quickly jump-start your app development with full-featured SDKs for different programming languages and get real-time webhook updates to keep your apps in ‍‌‍‍‌sync.

Are you ready to scale your SaaS with confidence and win bigger clients? Get started with WorkOS today and simplify complex enterprise feature integrations to focus on the product itself!

🌎 Website Link: https://workos.com

Thanks to the WorkOS team for sponsoring this article!

2. Supernova - Convert design prototypes into code

Supernova allows to plan the design features with your team and turn prototypes into the depyoyment-ready code for developers thus the making the shipment of frontend much faster.

Key features & why to use it:

Automates the process from building design prototypes to development-ready code.
Supports popular design platforms like Figma, AI inherit your design tokens.
Comes with live update syncing thereby making iteration easy, with no conflicts.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.supernova.io

3. Coda - Build collaborative knowledge hubs

Coda lets teams to create customizable documents and workflows which combines documents, spreadsheets, and apps in one place boosting collaboration and efficiency.

Key features & why to use it:

Flexible doc builder integrates tables, charts, and automation features.
Real-time collaboration with robust sharing and commenting for seamless teamwork.
Supports powerful formulas and customizable templates for advanced use.

🌎 Website Link: https://coda.io

4. Polar - Monetize apps and manage payments

Polar is useful for SaaS builders dealing with digital products to get an all-around solution that makes pricing management, invoice automation and payment processing easy.

Key features & why to use it:

Flexible billing (working as global MoR) with customizable pricing and subscription plans.
Real-time revenue, cost, and profit tracking dashboards.
Streamlined customer lifecycle management with detailed analytics.

🌎 Website Link: https://polar.sh

5. Metlo - Secure and monitor API endpoints

Metlo provides an intelligent platform to secure, monitor, and analyze API endpoints, helping developers to check the API health, maintain high-level security, and performance.

Key features & why to use it:

Real-time API monitoring with anomaly detection and blocking of malicious traffic.
Automatic security policy generation and enforcement before going to production.
In-depth analytics for better comprehension and insights on API usage and performance trends.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.metlo.com

6. Vero - Automate marketing campaigns

Vero is a multi-channel customer engagement platform, and product-led teams can use it for automation of email, SMS, and push notifications to enhance communication with clients.

Key features & why to use it:

Communication through multi-channel campaigns like email, SMS, and push notifications.
Target specific user groups by using intuitive segmentation.
Comes with built-in real-time analytics and campaign performance tracking features.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.getvero.com

7. Smartlook - Analyze user behavior visually

Smartlook mixes quantitative with qualitative analytics by providing session recordings and event tracking services that enable teams to comprehend the user interaction and optimize product experiences.

Key features & why to use it:

Session recordings with advanced filtering for user sessions replay.
Event-based analytics used for tracking user actions and conversions.
Visual heatmaps explaining clicks, scrolls, and user navigation paths.

🌎 Website Link: https://www.smartlook.com

8. UserJot - Collect actionable user feedback

UserJot makes the process of gathering user feedback simple through customizable surveys and forms which provide valuable insights for teams in product development and customer satisfaction.

Key features & why to use it:

Easy customizable surveys designed for the collection of user feedback.
Real-time feedback analysis and reporting dashboard.
Simple integration with existing tools and workflows.

🌎 Website Link: https://userjot.com

9. Railway - Deploy apps and databases with ease

Railway automates app and database deployment as well as infrastructure management, thus giving indie hackers the power to quickly host production-ready apps to be accessible for public.

Key features & why to use it:

GitHub integration and CI/CD used for quick automatic deployments.
Thoughtout infrastructure with minimal configuration, easy to get started for anyone.
All of the most common languages, databases, and cloud providers are supported.

🌎 Website Link: https://railway.com

Did you like the resources? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

9 Developer Productivity Tools You Wish You Knew Sooner 🔥🧑‍💻

Madza — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 13:29:43 +0000

The‍‌‍‍‌ selection of powerful developer tools has been a key factor in increasing developer productivity, providing advanced solutions that make complicated workflows simple.

The variety of tools available has grown, and therefore, finding those that can really change your work may still take you some time and feel daunting if you do not know where to look.

In this article I have manually curated 9 cutting-edge developer productivity tools that I've recently explored and found to be valuable for enhancing the coding efficiency to build cool projects.

The tools mentioned here extend various niches, such as fast build processes, workflow automation, simple authentication, performance monitoring, prototyping, static site generation, task automation, and serverless databases.

Let's dive in and discover tools designed to make your coding projects smoother and more productive!

1. Depot – Accelerate Your Container Builds by 40x

Depot‍‌‍‍‌ is a cloud-based build service that accelerates Docker image creation and optimizes GitHub Actions workflows with managed caching, reducing build times and resource usage.

It integrates smoothly into new or existing CI/CD pipelines, allowing developers to minimize wait times and speed up the process of building and deploying sites and applications.

Some of the most awesome features:

⚡️ Lightning-fast builds: Utilize powerful remote builders with 16 CPUs and 32GB RAM by default to shorten Docker build times, allowing your local machine to be free for other important tasks.

💾 Caching for incremental builds: Access a remote caching service that provides incremental builds and accelerated tests, both locally and inside of your favorite CI provider.

🧑‍💻 Multi-architecture support: Build Intel and ARM (including AWS Graviton and Apple Silicon) images without the need for emulation, ensuring both compatibility and speed for cross-platform deployments.

🔌 Easy integrations: Execute "depot build" instead of "docker build" in your terminal or use it with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins. Docker Compose and private registries are supported, as well.

🚀 Autoscaling and local dev acceleration: Speed up your daily workflows, from dev containers to autoscaling builds, faster so that you can iterate without the need to manage infrastructure.

Tired of slow container builds eating into your dev time? Try Depot today and reclaim hours every week while cutting costs in half—build smarter, not harder!

Headed to KubeCon? Meet the Depot team at booth #1453: https://fandf.co/47NcEdB

🌎 Website Link: https://depot.dev/

Thanks to the Depot team for sponsoring this article!

2. Trigger.dev - Automate app triggers and actions

Trigger.dev‍‌‍‍‌ allows developers to create automated triggers and actions that can be run in the background without the need for complex infrastructure management. They can be retried, are observable, and can be easily scaled.

Key features & why to use it:

Prepare trigger workflows that react to events like code commits, issues, or notifications.
Automate issue tracking, assignment, and prioritization to reduce bottlenecks.
Documentation is always in-sync and up to date when a code change is merged.

🌎 Website Link: https://trigger.dev

3. Argos CI - Detect UI changes and review diffs

Argos CI helps developers automate visual testing of web applications and UI components across different browsers and resolutions so that they can easily check design changes, review diffs, and confidently release them to public.

Key features & why to use it:

User-friendly interface reduces learning curve and speeds up becoming effective.
Concise reports on visual discrepancies provide actionable insights.
Works smoothly with existing CI pipelines and supports cross-browser testing.

🌎 Website Link: https://argos-ci.com

4. Proto.io - Build modern interactive prototypes

Proto.io enables UX designers and product teams to rapidly create fully interactive, no-code web and mobile prototypes using a rich library of modern-looking UI components.

Key features & why to use it:

Pre-built UI components and templates designed to simplify and speed up the creation of a prototype.
It uses animations and gestures to create realistic, interactive, high-fidelity prototypes.
Prototypes can be shared easily to get feedback and validation from users.

🌎 Website Link: https://proto.io

5. Stack Auth - Simplify user authentication & management

Stack Auth offers a highly customizable authentication and user management tool with built in support for solutions like SSO, 2FA, and OAuth for quick, secure integrations.

Key features & why to use it:

Pre-built React components that are pretty and take less time to develop.
Supports integrated support for SSO, 2FA, and OAuth token management.
Comes with complex permission trees and role management for sophisticated apps.

🌎 Website Link: https://stack-auth.com

6. CodSpeed - Measure performance and fix issues

CodSpeed helps users detect, measure, and prevent application performance regressions by integrating performance monitoring and optimization directly into your workflow.

Key features & why to use it:

Automated commit-level flamegraphs pinpoint performance bottlenecks.
Integration with popular CI systems ensures that regressions are caught before the release.
Consistent, noise-filtered metrics help users make performance decisions with confidence.

🌎 Website Link: https://codspeed.io

7. Nextra - Generate performant static sites

Nextra simplifies documentation and static site generation. It takes Markdown content and turns it into fast, SEO-friendly Next.js sites with theming and localization features baked right in.

Key features & why to use it:

Complete automation of Markdown conversion to Next.js with optimized links and images.
Extremely fast syntax highlighting and full-text search features are supported.
It can render the Server, Client Components, or ISR in a hybrid model.

🌎 Website Link: https://nextra.site

8. Taskfile - Speed up task running processes

Taskfile‍‌‍‍‌ is a quick, cross-platform build tool, inspired by Make, and is aimed at simplifying and automating the running of demanding tasks and processes of your projects.

Key features & why to use it:

Quick, less than a minute setup with no dependencies for instant productivity boosts.
Compatible with different package managers like Homebrew, Snapcraft, and Scoop.
The definition of flexible tasks helps the workflows to be reusable and maintainable.

🌎 Website Link: https://taskfile.dev

9. Upstash - Store data on a serverless platform

Upstash is a cloud-native solution offering serverless, low-latency Redis and Kafka services that scale easily and provide pay-as-you-go pricing for modern cloud-native ‍‌‍‍‌applications.

Key features & why to use it:

On-demand usage based pricing plan, best fitting for scalable serverless architectures.
Edge databases available worldwide to ensure data access with very low latency.
Simple integration with the latest frameworks and modern serverless platforms.

🌎 Website Link: https://upstash.com

Did you like the resources? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

9 Useful Open Source Projects to Simplify Your Life as a Developer 🧑‍💻⚡️

Madza — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 14:39:01 +0000

Open source provides a fantastic opportunity to learn from, work with, and develop alongside a worldwide community of developers and creators who are driven by their passion.

On the other hand, with as many projects as there are, finding the exact tools that will really impact your work can be quite a daunting and time-consuming task.

In this article, I have compiled 9 open-source projects that will help developers to enhance their productivity, streamline their workflows, and create more powerful applications.

The range of these tools varies from AI coding assistants and visual design editors to background frameworks and no-code databases to name a few examples.

I have included the descriptions, features, direct links and image previews of each project so that you can quickly evaluate their suitability to your tech stack.

Let’s go through these open-source resources and I hope they will be useful for you and they will enhance your developer experience for your future projects!

1. Kilo Code – Code faster and smarter with AI assistance

Kilo Code is an open-source, multi-agent AI coding system that connects developers to any LLM (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Ollama), tailored to users who want speed, flexibility, and full control of their workflow.

It works in all the major code editors such as VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, Cursor and Windsurf allowing you to move from idea to implementation faster, with fewer repetitive tasks and cleaner code.

Founded by the co-founder of GitLab, Kilo Code has reached 400,000 downloads in under 6 months!

Some of the most awesome features include:

🚀 Generate code from natural language: Explain your needs in simple text and get production-ready code snippets that are well-structured are generated right in your favorite code editor.

🤔 Ask questions about your code: Ask complex questions about code, APIs, or functions in your natural language and get explanatory answers that are understandable and contextual.

🔧 Refactor and debug errors: Locate mistakes to make code more efficient, and clean up/refactor your code by AI suggestions which enhances performance and maintainability.

🤖 Supports more than 400 models: Switch between custom, local and frontier LLMs and use them the day they come out thanks to active maintenance and feature release cycle.

🤝 Provides the workspace for teams: Manage your team with centralized billing, role-based access controls, and usage reports, ensuring transparency and collaboration.

Want to turn your ideas into working code faster? Try Kilo Code today and watch it generate, refactor, and document code right inside your favorite IDE/editor in seconds!

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/Kilo-Org/kilocode

🌎 Website: https://kilocode.ai

Thanks to the Kilo Code team for sponsoring this article!

2. Onlook - Design eye-appealing web interfaces

Onlook is the next-generation visual-first code editor that allows designers and developers to create and edit websites and product demos by using AI and real-time collaboration.

Key features & why to use it:

Visual editor with Figma-like UI for real-time design and code integration.
Supports React, Next.js, TailwindCSS, and imports from Figma and GitHub repos.
Supports real-time collaboration, branching, and the apps also can be deployed instantly.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/onlook-dev/onlook

🌎 Website: https://onlook.com

3. Nitric - Build powerful serverless applications

Nitric is an open-source framework that simplifies developer tasks of building, testing, and deploying serverless applications across multiple cloud environments quickly and efficiently.

Key features & why to use it:

Unified APIs for cloud functions, storage, and message queues.
Automatically provisions cloud resources and handles infrastructure setup.
Supports AWS, GCP, and Azure with one consistent developer workflow.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/nitrictech/nitric

🌎 Website: https://nitric.io

4. Baserow - Store and manage your data

Baserow is a no-code database platform that makes it simple for you to create, manage, and share data-based applications. It is an efficient open-source alternative to Airtable.

Key features & why to use it:

Interface similar to a spreadsheet for managing and visually representing structured data.
Designed as API-first for easy integration with external systems and tools.
Option to be self-hosted or run from the cloud for full data control and flexibility.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/baserow/baserow

🌎 Website: https://baserow.io

5. Hatchet - Run and monitor background tasks

Hatchet is a quick, scalable, and simple to use task queue/orchestration solution that allows the user to chain, monitor, and recover demanding background tasks with reliability.

Key features & why to use it:

Dashboard in real-time for monitoring the status of tasks and workflows.
Workflow chaining with retries, dependencies, and failure notifications.
Enables support for retries in a robust manner even if there is a worker or system failure.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/hatchet-dev/hatchet

🌎 Website: https://hatchet.run

6. Rivet - Build and scale stateful workloads

Rivet is an open-source library for building modern scalable, real-time, long-lived stateful applications with hibernation capabilities. Automatically restarts on failure while preserving state integrity.

Key features & why to use it:

It is self-hostable and compatible with your present infrastructure.
WebSocket/SSE is supported for instant built-in updates.
Resilient by the core design and has built-in failover and recovery.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/rivet-dev/rivet

🌎 Website: https://rivet.dev

7. Requestly - Test and modify API requests

Requestly is an API client and an HTTP-interceptor tool that enables developers to test, mock, and modify HTTP requests & responses as part of their development workflows.

Key features & why to use it:

Rules can be created for redirection, modification of headers, and mocking API response.
An API client with environments, collections, and testing features.
Use it locally or as a team workspace for collaborative API debugging.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/requestly/requestly

🌎 Website: https://requestly.io

8. Unleash - Manage coding feature releases

Unleash is a feature flag platform which helps developers to plan, schedule and release new features by providing gradual rollouts, A/B testing, and so on across different environments.

Key features & why to use it:

Enables controlled feature rollouts and targeted user segmentation.
Provides SDKs for various programming languages as well as flexible deployment options.
Enables the real-time toggling of features without the need for app redeployment.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/unleash/unleash

🌎 Website: https://www.getunleash.io/

9. SolidTime - Track time and billing for projects

SolidTime is a modern time-tracking app for developers to manage projects, clients, and billing, that gives you a fast and consistent experience across every device wherever you are.

Key features & why to use it:

Manage clients, projects, tasks, and associated time entries you spent working.
Set billable rates and track hours across multiple organizations.
Self-hosted option with an open-source license and import from other tools.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/solidtime-io/solidtime

🌎 Website: https://solidtime.io

Did you like the article? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!

8 Open Source Projects Every Developer Needs to Star on GitHub ⭐️📚

Madza — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 14:09:00 +0000

Open source allows programmers to have access to a wide range of powerful tools, which enable them to build applications faster, smarter, and with higher scalability.

Nevertheless, the growing number of new projects that come up so fast can make it very difficult, and even frustrating, to pick out the ones that will bring the productivity of developers in practice.

In order to make the process easier for you, I have compiled a list of eight open-source tools that are boosting the full-stack development and hopefully will help you to become more efficient, too.

Their features range from cloud infrastructure management with SQL, real-time databases, secure app frameworks to comprehensive authentication & user management, cache solutions and uptime monitoring.

Every project is designed to make the work faster, simpler, and to give developers the freedom to focus on the main thing, which is creating awesome software.

Explore these tools for your next full-stack project and discover which ones you would have liked to have known earlier. Let’s dive in!

1. StackQL – Manage Cloud and SaaS resources using SQL

StackQL is a revolutionary open-source project that redefines the way developers work with cloud management, as it allows to access, create and manage cloud and SaaS resources via the familiar SQL language.

With StackQL, managing complex cloud infrastructure becomes as straightforward as running simple SQL commands, allowing support for multi-cloud operations, and boosting productivity without steep learning curve.

Some of the most awesome features include:

🔍 Unified Cloud Querying: Query and access cloud services or providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, Azure and more by writing SQL statements in a language that most developers are familiar with.

⚙️ Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Deploy, update, and manage various cloud and SaaS resources declaratively using INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE SQL commands without managing complex state files.

🌐 Cross-Cloud Reporting: With SQL joins and unions supported, cross-cloud queries can become quite powerful and you can access resources from different independent cloud environments and analyze them.

💻 Multi-Mode Usage: You can choose to install StackQL as part of your interactive REPL shell, command line utility, or script files depending on what suits your automation and development workflows best.

📊 Rich Output Formats: Receive the results of a query in various formats, such as tabular, JSON, CSV, and text, etc. making integration with downstream tools and analytics easy.

Ready to simplify your cloud management today? Try StackQL now - it’s free, open-source, and requires no complex setups! Utilize the powerful SQL queries across all your cloud services in one place!

⭐️ Star their GitHub repository: https://github.com/stackql/stackql

🌎 Website Link: https://stackql.io/

Thanks to the StackQL team for sponsoring this article!

2. Tauri - Build fast & secure cross-platform apps

Tauri is a framework that enables developers to create lightweight and safe desktop and mobile apps, allowing them to deliver apps that have a minimal footprint, with high performance.

Key features & why to use it:

Creates applications that are small, efficient, and secure, which consume low memory and CPU.
Allows one codebase to develop cross-platform (Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS) applications.
Any frontend framework can be easily integrated with Tauri while having a Rust backend which is safe and fast.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri

🌎 Website Link: https://v2.tauri.app/

3. StackAuth - Handle authentication & user management

StackAuth gives the user a simple-to-implement, secure, scalable, and user-friendly authentication solution to quickly and easily secure the login part of the application and reduce the login management workload.

Key features & why to use it:

Delivers easily made, well-styled auth components including password, SSO, 2FA, and magic links for setting up your application quickly.
Allows advanced multi-tenancy with organizations, teams, and role-based access control to increase the number of B2B customers you can manage.
Deals securely and effectively with OAuth connections, token refresh, passkeys, impersonation, webhooks, and user sessions.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/stack-auth/stack-auth

🌎 Website Link: https://stack-auth.com/

4. Hurl - Run HTTP requests defined in plain text

Hurl is a command-line tool that allows users to execute and experiment with HTTP requests in simple plain text format, made for developers who want to test and validate REST, SOAP, GraphQL, and HTML APIs.

Key features & why to use it:

Allows running of HTTP requests in a human-readable plain text format which is easy to create scripts.
Enables setting of multiple assertions on response headers, and body with the use of XPath, JSONPath, and status codes.
Is compatible with CI/CD pipelines to automate tests and have a continuous deployment process.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl

🌎 Website Link: https://hurl.dev/

5. Instant - Create a real-time APIs & databases

Instant provides a real-time backend for frontend applications designed to simplify development by built-in queries, transactions, auth, and offline support, and seamless data sync.

Key features & why to use it:

Delivers real-time data synchronization enabling that updates are completed immediately to all the connected clients.
Offline mode is supported which means that applications can work without any interruptions even if there is no internet connection.
Facilitates relational queries allowing for even more versatile and reliable data management.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/instantdb/instant

🌎 Website Link: https://www.instantdb.com/

6. Readyset - Use cache layer to boost performance

Readyset is a simple and effective SQL caching layer for PostgreSQL and MySQL that can increase the query speed 100 times without any code modification, resulting in cost savings and easy scaling.

Key features & why to use it:

Performance of queries is accelerated up to 100 times as a result of caching and incremental updating of query results.
Acts as a proxy for integration with no replication lag, thus ensuring real-time data at all times.
Most of the traffic is taken away from the database, in turn, the infrastructure needs are lowered, thus database costs are cut by up to 70%.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/readysettech/readyset

🌎 Website Link: https://readyset.io/

7. Redash - Visualize database data in reports & graphs

Redash is a project that makes it possible to link, inquire and visualize the data present in different databases. Essentially, this tool simplifies the data insight process for teams through dashboards and alerts.

Key features & why to use it:

Can easily establish a connection with various data sources such as SQL, NoSQL, Big Data, and APIs.
Provides a robust online SQL editor equipped with schema browsing and modifiable query snippets for reuse.
By using drag and drop visualizations and scheduled data refreshes, you can build interactive and customizable dashboards.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/getredash/redash

🌎 Website Link: https://redash.io/

8. Gatus - Monitor website uptime and health

Gatus is an easy-to-use monitoring tool that runs checks on your websites automatically to make sure they are working well and sends alerts if needed so that the services remain reliable and efficient.

Key features & why to use it:

Customizable health checks, for example, you can set a condition based on the status, response time, and even the body of the request.
Just a few steps and you can set up and extend your support for HTTP, ICMP, TCP, and DNS monitoring.
The alerting system that comes with the product is compatible with different providers such as Slack, PagerDuty, Teams, and Twilio that make the notification delivery instant.

👨‍💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/TwiN/gatus

🌎 Website Link: https://gatus.io/

Did you like the resources? Here is more 👇

Join 6,000+ others to receive the best DEV resources, tools, productivity tips, and career growth advice I discover by subscribing to my newsletter!

Also, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub!

Writing has always been my passion, and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you want to get featured or partner up, feel free to get in touch!