Feeling behind is natural, there's far, far more tools out there than accounted for. The main thing is to ask yourself how do you work and what's needed for your goals, projects, etc. I'm personally not quite there is letting the ai go autonomously, like if I'm working on paper I have it connect to zotero so I have a list of what's being cited. I think a lot of tools are bogus, you can go far with just model file + llama.cpp + tmux is just getting something running, obviously making a skill can automate some aspects of what the model does but remember models are not deterministic by nature.

My advice is find what you'll actually use and ignore the rest, I don't use a lot of skills or plugins really, maybe I could sit down and make 1-2 just thinking on it but really can't be asked. If someone tells you you're behind always remember in 2026 there are far more people globally who's biggest concern is if they'll have food to eat, running water, or working lights not "should I just the latest openai or anthropic model"

- I have a central folder I use with context, project folders, tasks.md files etc. - I have a skill like /plan-my-day that makes a nice html file with tasks list, status of my work and projects etc. - when I'm starting up a new idea I use matt pocock's `grill-me` skill, I dictate a lot with https://handy.computer/ text going straight into claude code window. - once I have a decent brain dump I figure out what to do next, whether it's code up a prototype or find some one to bounce ideas off and ask some questions (an internal person or a customer)

I'm always looking for some kind of novel way that people have found to use, and the highest ROI thing I've found is the concept of the grill-me skill.

Please share other workflows, ideas, skills etc.

Some advice:

Don't install a whole plugin of skills, they use way too many tokens at rest in your context, instead work in your own .claude folder often, and vendor copies of specific skills or write your own.