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# How I Work: My Solo Dev Setup, Time Management, and Running Companies | S2E6
- URL: https://varops.com/how-i-work-my-solo-dev-setup-time-management-and-running-companies-s2e6/
- Published: 2026-07-22T19:03:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-22T19:03:00.000Z
- Description: Remote “local” setup, coding harnesses, automation buckets, and why most of his job is classifying work — not typing it.
- Author: Ran Aroussi
- Tags: Old School / New Tech

People keep asking how Ran gets through it all — book(s), [Automaze](https://automaze.io/?ref=varops.com) (\~30 people), [VarOps](https://varops.com/) climbing out of stealth, open source, this show. This episode is the answer: setup, then time, then how the companies actually run.

## The stack (technical)

**Cloud-local hybrid.** Debate rages about local vs cloud coding environments. Ran’s middle path: a dedicated home-office Mac that’s his alone, reachable from anywhere — “local” when he’s exploring, remote when he needs to. Full config, room to experiment.

**Harnesses by stage.**

- Exploratory / figuring-it-out: [Factory](https://factory.ai/?ref=varops.com)’s Droid as the go-to harness; [Paseo](https://paseo.sh/?ref=varops.com) (Cursor-style local IDE that speaks many harnesses, including Droid) for ad hoc work and even mobile long-running sessions.
- Mature product / feature-fix mode: **Cloop** — Automaze’s internal Devon-style environment (shipping later). Brainstorming module, **Ladybug** for production bug hunt → fix → PR (human always in the loop at PR).
- Sessions stay consistent: whether work starts from [MUXI](https://muxi.org/?ref=varops.com), Droid, or Cloop, coding funnels into the same Droid harness.

**Assistant layer.** MUXI is the personal OS (he built it; he can extend it). [Claude Desktop](https://claude.ai/download?ref=varops.com) is the client, wired over MCP — Claude as brainstorming partner with MUXI underneath. Morning briefings, Slack triage, email drafts, meeting prep: automations on MUXI.

**Everyday tools.** Apple Reminders + Notes. [Superhuman](https://superhuman.com/?ref=varops.com) for email (back after a years-long break). VS Code mostly as a word processor / book-writing environment, not a daily IDE. Hosting for his own projects: Cloudflare, Hetzner, DigitalOcean (clients get whatever fits).

**Self-host almost everything** — not to save $20/month (token spend is huge), but for data ownership and the option to touch the raw DB when needed.

## Time: classify, don’t type

The job used to be doing the work. Now it’s deciding which *bucket* the work goes in — Bezos-flavored: a small number of high-quality decisions, then time left for building and experimenting (including things that never ship).

\~20–30 decisions a day, almost all classifications:

- rails vs agents
- human vs automated vs kill the process

Anything done more than a few times gets automated into one of three shapes: fully deterministic (no AI), hybrid (workflow with a fuzzy AI step), or agent-shaped when judgment is the point.

Most hours go to **thinking**: stripping products to first principles, shrinking codebases to cut maintenance surface, deciding what *not* to build. Hours (sometimes days) of brainstorming and speccing in Claude before a line of code — often with GPT and [Perplexity](https://www.perplexity.ai/?ref=varops.com) in the loop for research/pushback while Ran stays the human in the middle. Generation is cheap; judgment isn’t. He reads agent-produced code and comments heavily.

Email: closed by default, opened twice a day around the briefing. Short VIP list for urgent operational paths (e.g. accountant), not a status ranking.

## Automations stay gated on purpose

Not because AI “isn’t ready.” Because every client is an edge case. AI clears dirty work; it doesn’t replace him on partner/client communication. The gate is a judgment dial, not a maturity cop-out.

## How Automaze and VarOps actually run

Lean founder ≠ solo. Partners Anton and Alex run the team and pipeline. Ran’s focus: customers in/out, PRDs, product shape — then handoff, with a jump back for the last \~10% and forks in the road.

**Leads:** \~99% inbound — open source, podcast, newsletter, book(s). Not a quarter-long growth hack; fifteen years of giving things away.

**FDE by design.** Automaze has always embedded in client environments. Ran personally FDEs new clients early — spec, process, lived context — then hands to the team. Not insecurity about company size; you can’t talk confidently (or improve process) about what you haven’t felt. Small number of high-quality decisions requires understanding first.

## The point

Machine, lists, pipeline — all scaffolding to protect the context in his head so he can classify all day. That’s the job now.

Newsletter / PDF version teased via [aroussi.com](https://aroussi.com/?ref=varops.com).