AD Andrew Drake CTO / Senior Developer
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▍ Tech stack

The platforms and tools I build with.

A focused toolkit, refined over many years. I prefer to go deep on a small set of technologies rather than chase every shiny release — the TALL stack at the core, with proven supporting tools either side.

Category 01

Languages & Frameworks

The core craft — what I write most days.

PHP

PHP

Daily driver since 1997. PHP 8.4 and modern type-safe patterns.

Laravel

Laravel

Primary framework. Deep familiarity with the ecosystem and packages.

Livewire

Livewire

Reactive UI in PHP — no separate JS framework required.

Alpine.js

Alpine.js

Lightweight client-side behaviour where it adds value.

Tailwind CSS

Tailwind CSS

Utility-first CSS — design systems that ship fast.

Filament

Filament

Admin panels and internal tools at staff-engineer speed.

Category 02

Hosting & Infrastructure

Where applications actually run.

Laravel Cloud

Laravel Cloud

First-party Laravel hosting — zero-config production deploys.

Laravel Forge

Laravel Forge

Provisioning and deployment for VPS-based Laravel apps.

AWS

AWS

S3, SES, CloudFront and the rest, where the workload justifies it.

Vultr

Vultr

Cost-effective VPS hosting for production workloads.

Linode

Linode

Reliable VPS with great support — long-standing favourite.

Category 03

Observability & Analytics

Knowing what is happening, before users do.

Bugsnag

Bugsnag

Error monitoring with the best signal-to-noise ratio I have used.

Nightwatch

Nightwatch

Laravel-native application monitoring.

New Relic

New Relic

Full-stack APM for deeper traces, transactions and infrastructure metrics.

Datadog

Datadog

APM, logs and infrastructure observability for larger production estates.

Fathom Analytics

Fathom Analytics

Privacy-first, cookie-free web analytics.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics

When stakeholders need the standard reporting view.

Category 04

Security & Compliance

Application security, PII protection and the frameworks that prove it.

Aikido

Aikido

Unified AppSec — SAST, DAST, SCA, secrets and IaC scanning in one place.

OWASP ZAP

OWASP ZAP

Open-source DAST proxy for active and passive web-app scanning.

Burp Suite Pro

Burp Suite Pro

Manual penetration testing and authenticated vulnerability discovery.

Category 05

AI & Tooling

The day-to-day environment — and where AI now lives in the workflow.

OpenAI

OpenAI

GPT models for product features and internal automation.

Claude

Claude

Anthropic's models — primary pair-programming companion.

Polyscope

Polyscope

AI-powered code review built on top of Laravel.

Air.dev

Air.dev

AI agent platform for product and engineering workflows.

PHPStorm

PHPStorm

IDE of choice. Refactoring tools that pay rent every day.

Postman

Postman

API design, testing and documentation.

GitHub

GitHub

Source control, issues, CI, and code review.

Algolia

Algolia

Hosted search when the built-in options are not enough.

Category 06

Payments

Taking money — the part that has to just work.

Stripe

Stripe

Payments, subscriptions, invoicing and connect platforms.

Right tool for the job

Building something on the TALL stack?

Let's talk