Every tool here earns its place by surviving real operational load.
No affiliate roundup. No "top 10 AI tools" listicle. This is the actual stack behind a working portfolio of stores and the productized work at Digital Shijil. If something stops earning its place, it leaves.
Automation
The connective tissue. Almost every operational improvement in my stores starts as a workflow in one of these two tools.
n8n PRIMARY
Self‑hosted, fair‑source, infinitely flexible. The single most leveraged piece of software in my entire operation. If a task happens twice, it ends up here.
Make.com SECONDARY
The faster choice when a workflow needs to ship today and self‑hosting isn’t worth the friction. Used for client‑facing automations under digitalshijil.com.
AI & Models
Used as building blocks inside workflows, not as a destination. The model is rarely the interesting part — it’s what you wrap around it.
Claude DAILY
The model I reach for first for any task that involves writing, reasoning, or operating on structured business data. Claude Code lives in my terminal.
OpenAI UTILITY
Embeddings, transcription, and the occasional model swap when the task is a better fit. Less central than it used to be, still load‑bearing.
Gemini CONTEXT
Long context window jobs. Useful when an entire knowledge base needs to be in scope and you don’t want to chunk it.
DeepSeek VOLUME
Cheap, surprisingly good, perfect for the high‑volume / low‑stakes parts of a workflow where you don’t need a frontier model.
ElevenLabs VOICE
Voice generation for content workflows and a few experimental customer‑facing experiences. Quality is no longer the bottleneck — taste is.
Perplexity RESEARCH
The default search‑with‑citations layer for product, market, and competitive research. Faster than reading 12 tabs.
E‑commerce platforms
The shop floor. Different stores live on different platforms — there’s no one right answer, only the right answer for the niche, the margin, and the operator.
WooCommerce FLEXIBLE
The default for stores where I want full control of the database, the checkout, and the integrations. WordPress quirks included.
Shopify SPEED
For stores where time‑to‑launch and operational simplicity outweigh customization. The platform pays for itself in saved engineering hours.
FunnelKit CHECKOUT
One‑page checkout, upsells, and bumps for WooCommerce stores. Quietly responsible for a significant share of AOV gains.
CartFlows FUNNELS
Funnel layer for landing‑page‑to‑checkout flows. Lower ceiling than FunnelKit, lower friction for simple campaigns.
Backend & data
Where the operational state actually lives. The store is the front of house. This is the kitchen.
Supabase DATABASE
Postgres with sane defaults, auth, storage, and edge functions in one place. The default choice for any internal tool I build.
Hostinger HOSTING
Where most of the WordPress & static properties live. Honest pricing, no surprises, fast enough for what they need to do.
Code & development
The tools that produce the work. Strong opinions, lightly held.
Claude Code DEFAULT
The terminal‑native coding agent that genuinely changed how I write software. Long‑running tasks, real file edits, cheaper than another contractor.
VS Code EDITOR
The editor I keep coming back to. Boring, fast, configurable. Cline runs alongside it for the times I want a different agent shape.
Business infrastructure
The unsexy but load‑bearing pieces that let a one‑person operation behave like a real company.
Mercury BANKING
US business banking for the international side of the operation. Genuinely the cleanest banking experience I’ve ever used.
US LLC structure LEGAL
Operating internationally as a one‑person shop without an LLC is a tax decision and a credibility decision rolled into one. I made it years ago.
If you want me to actually build with this stack inside your business — that’s what I do at Digital Shijil.
Visit Digital Shijil ↗