Brendon Degner

Tools

Uses

The AI bots, coding agents, camera, lenses, and printers I use day to day, from Claude Code on a Mac mini to a Sony a7R V. No affiliate links.

AI and building

  • Grok Bot, the front door for everything. I talk to one bot and it hands work to a fleet of specialist bots.
  • Claude Code, running on an always-on Mac mini, for hands on work with local files, repos and apps.
  • Cursor cloud agents, for work that should arrive as a pull request I review and merge.
  • GitHub, where the code and this site live.
  • n8n, for small automations that run on a schedule.
  • Wispr Flow, for dictating instead of typing.
  • Gemini, for basic Google searching.
  • Muse, which I just started using. It connects to Facebook and works there for me.

Notes and work

  • Obsidian, for notes. I keep separate vaults for work and home.
  • Google Workspace, for mail, calendar, docs and sheets.
  • Slack, where the bots post their briefs.
  • Syncthing, to keep notes in sync between the Mac mini and my laptop.

Hardware

  • Mac mini, always on at home. It runs Claude Code and the scheduled jobs.
  • MacBook Pro, my everyday laptop.
  • Brother HL-L3280CDW color laser printer. It prints a one page morning brief every weekday.
  • Synology NAS, for storage at home.
  • LG 43 inch widescreen monitor

Photographs

Finished frames are in the gallery. Notes on one day of editing are in six frames from one day on Mykonos.

Camera

  • Sony a7R V, my main camera.
  • Insta360
  • GoPro HERO9 Black

Lenses

  • Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DG DN II Art, for travel and landscape. Most of my travel frames come from this one.
  • Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 DG DN OS Sports, for indoor sports like swim and dance.
  • Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS, for wildlife and outdoor soccer.

Editing

  • Lightroom Classic, for basic edits and the catalog.
  • Photoshop, where I hand off to finish a master.
  • A small panel of AI critics (exposure, print and composite) that review a master before I print it.

Printing

  • Canon PIXMA PRO-100, for proofs and prints at home up to 13 by 19, mostly on Canon Photo Paper Pro Luster.
  • Bay Photo, my lab for large fine art wall prints.

Storage

  • Synology NAS, the archive for the photo library.
  • Samsung T7 Shield, a portable SSD for backing up cards on trips.

Support and bags

  • Really Right Stuff, for tripod support.
  • Peak Design, for bags.

Video

  • Elgato Camera Hub, with its teleprompter, for recording on the MacBook Pro.

House

  • Home Assistant, self hosted, running a family dashboard in our kitchen.

This site

  • Astro, for the pages. Plain Markdown, no database, no third party scripts.
  • Cloudflare Pages, for hosting. It rebuilds when a change merges on GitHub.
  • Cloudflare Registrar, for the domain.
  • Cloudflare Email Routing, so hello@brendondegner.com reaches my inbox.

Affiliate disclosure

I do not use affiliate links on this page. If a link ever earns a commission, I will say so next to that link.