Every dev tools list on the internet sorts by GitHub stars. We don't.
The honest reason this exists
Most directories are scraping operations. Bots pull repository metadata, sort by popularity, slap on some Tailwind, and call it a product. The information density is high but the signal-to-noise ratio is brutal. You learn that a tool has 30k stars. You don't learn whether you should use it.
StackPicks is the directory we wished existed when we were shipping our first SaaS at 2 AM and Stack Overflow had run out of opinions. Every entry here has been read, used, broken, and given a take. Some takes are short. Some are blunt. All of them tell you what we'd actually do — not what gets us affiliate commissions.
What you'll find here
- 104+ curated repos across 22 categories — UI, auth, payments, AI, animation, the boring middleware no one writes about
- A “use this if” clause on every entry, so you can match a tool to a real situation
- A “skip if” clause, because half of good engineering is knowing what to leave out
- Categories that match how builders actually search — not how Google indexes them
- Live GitHub data, refreshed nightly, so stars and last-push dates are never stale
What you won't find
- SEO-stuffed comparison tables written by someone who's never opened the docs
- “Top 10” clickbait recycled from last year's rankings
- Sponsored placements pretending to be neutral picks (sponsored slots are clearly labelled)
- Vague praise like “robust” or “scalable” without a concrete trade-off
- A pop-up newsletter modal that follows you down the scroll
Who we're for
Solo builders, indie hackers, weekend hackers, agency engineers, and anyone who has ever spent a Saturday evaluating five state management libraries before realising they should have just used the boring one. If you're building something — whether it's a SaaS, a side project, a portfolio app, or a tool only your team will ever see — this directory is calibrated for you.
The India context
We're built in India and we don't hide it. Pricing is in INR. Payments run on Razorpay because Stripe still doesn't serve Indian businesses cleanly. The Mumbai edge serves Indian readers in milliseconds. When a tool plays well with the Indian stack — Razorpay, UPI, GSTIN, IST timestamps — we say so. That doesn't mean we exclude the rest of the world; it just means we don't pretend US-only assumptions are universal.
How we make money
Five rails, all labelled, none cloaked:
- Sponsored listings — labelled clearly, never replace an honest take
- Affiliate links — only where the tool is one we'd recommend anyway
- Premium membership — ₹99 one-time, lifetime access, deeper collections + weekly newsletter
- Newsletter sponsorships — manual, clearly disclosed
- Job board — flat fee, no exclusivity, no spam
Every monetisation line is wired so we can keep the directory free for readers. If the directory ever stops being honest, we've lost the only moat that matters.
The principles
Neutral takes are useless. Builders don't need another data dump — they need a recommendation with a clear “but”.
We don't list tools we haven't at least tried. If a take feels theoretical, it's probably wrong and we'll rewrite it.
Every entry surfaces what's not great about the tool. If a take has no downside section, it's a sponsored pitch — and we mark those.
The best stack is usually the dullest one. We bias toward boring-but-correct over novel-but-rough. New things have to earn their slot.
What's next
The directory is the foundation. A weekly Sunday newsletter is next, then comparison deep-dives, then a job board for builder-shaped roles, then probably a mobile app once web traffic justifies it. Every step is calibrated to traffic, not to vibes — we'd rather ship one good thing late than three thin things on time.
Questions, corrections, a take you disagree with? The contact page has the real email and phone. We read every message.