Every tool I actually use.

The workflow engine for everything. Self-hosted on the Vulcani VPS, ~30 production workflows running. The free Community Edition is enough for most builders; only switch to Cloud or Pro if you need built-in user management or Vault credentials. Open-source, generous, and the GUI is genuinely the best in the category.

Powers every AI surface across Vulcani. Voice agent personalities, Atlas content generation, n8n summaries, newsletter drafts. Claude Sonnet 4.6 is my daily driver; Opus 4.7 for the hard reasoning tasks. Rate-stable, predictable, the prompt-engineering experience is best-in-class.

The voice layer for every voice agent install. Conversational AI agents, voice cloning (PVC for branded agents), text-to-speech for any audio asset. The Pro plan ($99/mo) is the sweet spot — Creator tier ($22/mo) is fine for solopreneurs, but the moment you have a phone agent live with real customer calls you'll want Pro for the rate limits.

Newsletter platform for The Signal + Whale Watch. Better than Substack for serious operators (custom domains, real referral programs, Stripe-direct paid tiers, no platform-cut on subscriptions, API for n8n auto-drafting). Free up to 2,500 subscribers, then $39+/mo. Affiliate program pays 50% first-year commission on referred paid subs.

$15/mo gets you a VPS that runs every site I have. KVM 2 plan, Ubuntu 24, ~60GB SSD. Hosts vulcani.io, raversrus.com, newlifesounds.com, baselinecaraudio.com, lift.vulcani.io, spark.vulcani.io, all the n8n workflows, and 5+ other Docker apps. Reliability has been close to 100% over 6 months.

DNS, CDN, DDoS protection, free SSL. The free plan covers 99% of what indie operators need. I use it for DNS routing on a few domains; the dashboard is fast, settings are sane, no paywall games. If you need Cloudflare Pages or Workers, the free tier is generous enough to run a small project end-to-end.

Reverse proxy + automatic Let's Encrypt SSL for every site on the VPS. Configures via Docker labels — when I add a new site, I just add 4 lines to docker-compose and Traefik handles the routing + cert. No manual SSL renewal, no nginx-config archaeology. If you're running multi-site on a VPS, this is the missing piece.

Every payment Vulcani takes goes through Stripe. Payment Links for one-off services, Checkout for higher-ticket installs, Subscriptions for recurring. Apple Pay + Google Pay built in. The Customer Portal handles cancellations, card updates, refunds — saves me ~5 hours a month I'd spend on customer service. Stripe Atlas (incorporation) has a $200+ affiliate kicker if you ever incorporate.

The AI video model I use for almost every promo clip. Best image-to-video quality at the price tier (~$0.30–$0.50 per generation). Powers the Vulcani AI Hype Video service. Access via Segmind (better dashboard) or fal.ai (cheaper, faster, but raw API).

Google's AI video model with native audio generation. Best for moments where you want sync sound (footsteps, ambient, dialogue). Uses ~5× more credits than Seedance, so I reserve it for hero clips. Inside Google AI Studio or via Replicate.

Strong for atmospheric / dance / liquid motion. Used heavily for the raversrus.com background videos. Subscription-based, $9/mo entry. Mix it in when you want a different aesthetic from Seedance — the two models hallucinate differently.

AI music generation that's actually usable. $10/mo for ~500 generations. I use it for event promo soundbeds, voice agent hold music, podcast intros. Pro tip: prompt with specific BPM + genre + mood, not just genre. "120bpm tech-house with dark synth lead" beats "edm song."

How most of this site got built. Anthropic's official CLI, paired with my CLAUDE.md context file (preferences, project stack, skills). Replaced ~80% of what I used to do in Cursor. Everything from "spin up this landing page" to "research and verify 28 SD venues."

Editor for everything that's not Claude Code's job. Plus Vim plugin, GitLens, and Docker. Don't spend time on IDE-shopping; spend it on shipping.

Sticker + small-merch printing. Used for raversrus.com / Continuum sticker drops. Quality is high, turnaround is 4–10 days, pricing is fair for short runs (50–500 pieces). Free first sample if you sign up via referral.

Lowest-friction digital product platform. Powers Seedance Prompts Vol 1, JARVIS Starter, and the rest of the Vulcani digital product line. 10% platform fee, no monthly cost, instant payouts. Beats Lemonsqueezy on simplicity, beats Stripe Checkout on file delivery. Affiliate program lets you promote other creators' products too.

If your site exists, you should have GSC set up. Free, takes 5 minutes, gives you actual search-impression data instead of guessing. Required for sitemap submission. Used to monitor SD Scene Atlas indexing.

Privacy-respecting analytics that's actually pleasant to read. $9/mo for 10k pageviews, $19/mo for 100k. Replaces GA4 for most indie use cases. No cookie banner needed in EU. The dashboard is the antithesis of GA4's complexity.

The cheapest SEO research tool that's actually useful. $30/mo, gives you keyword volume, difficulty, competitor analysis, content ideas. Not as deep as Ahrefs ($99+/mo), but for indie scale it's the right starting point. I use it for Atlas keyword research before writing any new venue content.

Booking page for consults and discovery calls. Free tier covers single-event-type use; the $10/mo Pro tier unlocks routing and integrations. Plugged into Stripe for paid 30-min consults. Saves me ~3 hours a week in back-and-forth scheduling.

Switched to Beehiiv. Mailchimp's UX has stayed clunky for years. ConvertKit is fine but more expensive at scale and weaker on growth tooling (Boosts, Recommendations).

Switched to a $15/mo Hostinger VPS with Docker + Traefik. More work upfront, way more control, costs less than one Vercel Pro plan for unlimited sites.

Switched to self-hosted n8n. Zapier hits cost ceiling fast at any real workflow volume. Make is fine but the n8n GUI + open-source angle won me over.

Switched to a parametric HTML pipeline (1 template, render N variations from a JSON file). Faster, more consistent, version-controllable. See the Event Promo Kit on Gumroad.