Why guteszeug exists

Over the years, I kept getting the same message.

From friends, family, people around me: "You once recommended this tool, what was it called again?"

Or: "Which keyboard would you buy?"

Or: "What was that small adapter again that you were so convinced by?"

At some point I noticed that I was telling the same recommendations for the third, fourth, fifth time.

Not because it annoyed me.

More the opposite.

I like good stuff.

I like it when a product, a tool or some small toy solves a real problem cleanly.

So now this site exists.

How recommendations happen for me

I rarely just buy anything.

Once a topic has grabbed me, I usually go far too deep.

Reviews, forums, GitHub issues, Reddit threads, spec sheets, bad YouTube comparisons, good comments under bad YouTube comparisons.

Everything.

Not because I necessarily want to find the objectively best thing.

That almost never exists.

I want to find the thing that fits my use case so well that nothing surprises me afterwards.

What should land here

This site is not a testing lab. I do not measure keyboards with fantasy scores and I do not build tables where every product ends up with 8.4 out of 10 points.

This is where stuff lands that I would actually use or already use:

• Software that removes work from me or makes a workflow noticeably better.
• Hardware that no longer annoys after buying it.
• Gadgets that are not just briefly funny, but stay.
• Experiments that worked surprisingly well.
• Small toys where I immediately want to message someone: "Look at this."

Concrete examples are my RTK experience for coding agents, the Keychron Q3 Max experience and the UniFi audit with Hermes.

Why I am making this public

First, because I want a reference archive for myself.

I want to still know in a year why I thought something was good, which variant I meant and what I really liked about it.

Second, because I want recommendations to be easier to share.

Instead of sending three voice messages every time, I can send a link.

Here, this is what I mean. Read this, then you will know whether it fits you too.

Third, because good recommendations on the internet have become weird. Too many affiliate lists, too many "Top 10" articles, too many texts where you notice after three paragraphs that nobody has really used the stuff.

What you can expect here

Opinion before neutrality.

If something is mediocre, it does not get in here.

If something has weaknesses, I write them down. And if I use an affiliate link, then not because a manufacturer paid me, but because this site is allowed to cover its own costs somehow.

That is the whole idea: good stuff, honestly recommended, in my words.

For friends, family, random readers and my future self, who again forgot what that one perfect thing was called.