Approved Zero Ops Tooling List

Approved Zero‑Ops Tooling List

Status: Living document · [Contributions Welcome ✍️] — submit tools you ship with.

Tools that meet the Zero‑Ops principle: a single operator can adopt, ship, and stay in production without becoming the tool's part‑time administrator. Each entry is scored 0–2 on the five‑axis rubric (Provisioning · Scaling · Ops burden · AI‑friendliness · Exit cost). 8+ = SAE‑grade.

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Workspace & Execution

Tool	Role	Score	Notes
Cursor	Engineer (IDE engine)	10	Repo‑aware editing, .cursorrules support
Claude Code	Engineer / Conductor CLI	10	Terminal‑native agent, multi‑file edits

Frontend Foundation

Tool	Role	Score	Notes
Next.js	App framework	9	Zero‑config builds, first‑class on edge platforms
v0	Visualizer (generative UI)	9	Prompt‑to‑component, exports clean code
Shadcn UI	Component primitives	9	Copy‑in components, no runtime lock‑in

Data & Persistence

Tool	Role	Score	Notes
Supabase	Postgres + auth + storage	9	Managed Postgres, instant APIs, standard pg_dump exit
Neon	Serverless Postgres	9	Branching DBs, scale‑to‑zero, portable Postgres

Infrastructure Compute

Tool	Role	Score	Notes
Vercel	Hosting / deploy	9	Git‑push deploys, automatic edge routing
Cloudflare	Edge compute / hosting	9	Global edge, Workers, generous free tier

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Submit a tool

Add a row (or a new tier) with this template, then open a PR or push to the wiki:

| <Tool name> | <Role in the Digital Org Chart> | <0–10 total> | <One-line: what friction it removes + exit-format note> |

Inclusion bar: score 8+, and a genuine exit story (standard export format, no hard lock‑in). Tools that trap your data or require a dedicated admin do not qualify, however popular.

Reality check. A high score is not a security or compliance endorsement. Before adopting any managed tool for regulated or sensitive data, verify its data‑residency, encryption, and certification posture yourself. The list ranks operational friction, not trust.