Every dev tools list on the internet sorts by GitHub stars. We don't. We surface what you should actually ship with — and back it with an analyst's take.
What StackPicks is
StackPicks is a paid digital directory service for software builders. Members pay a one-time lifetime fee and get curated coverage of every open-source tool worth using, plus ready-to-ship stack bundles for every common project type, plus step-by-step integration guides for AI coding agents.
Most dev directories are scraping operations — bots pull repository metadata, sort by popularity, slap on some Tailwind, and call it a product. You learn a tool has 30k stars. You don't learn whether you should use it. StackPicks does that second part — that's the service we charge for.
What members get
- 100+ curated tool listings across 22 stack categories — UI, auth, payments, AI, scraping, animation, and the boring middleware no one writes about
- 13 ready-to-ship stack bundles for SaaS, mobile, AI agent, scraper, e-commerce, internal dashboard, content platform, automation, and more
- The “use this if” clause on every tool — applied judgment, not generic praise
- The “skip if” clause, because half of engineering is knowing what to leave out
- Step-by-step AI-agent integration guides — how to feed each tool to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex on Mac + Windows
- Live, nightly-refreshed GitHub data so the directory never goes stale
- Members-only Discord, priority support, and weekly long-form analyses
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 this service is for
Solo builders, indie hackers, agency engineers, and tech leads who want a vetted answer instead of a Reddit thread. If you spend a Saturday evaluating five state-management libraries before realising you should have just used the boring one — StackPicks gives you the answer up front. The membership pays for itself the first time it saves you a bad architectural choice.
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 the service is funded
Five revenue rails, all labelled, none cloaked:
- Lifetime membership — ₹99 (or $2.99 intl) one-time, lifetime access to the full directory, all bundles, and weekly long-form analyses. The primary revenue line.
- Sponsored listings — labelled clearly, never replace an honest take
- Affiliate links — only where the tool is one we'd recommend anyway
- Newsletter sponsorships — manual, clearly disclosed
- Job board — flat fee per listing, no exclusivity, no spam
A free sample tier stays free forever — six tool listings per category are enough to judge the curation quality. Paid membership funds the deeper editorial work and keeps the open content honest.
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.
Who runs this
StackPicks is operated as a sole proprietorship by Piyush Jangir, based in India. Customer support and legal contact: nuvexalearning@gmail.com · +91 9667879848. All payments are processed in INR (or USD for international customers) via Razorpay — a PCI-DSS Level 1 certified Indian payment processor.