I’m constantly building small web-based tools for my own use. Usually, my workflow ends with a dilemma: do I keep a terminal tab open forever running `npx http-server -p 8080`, or do I spend time configuring a Caddyfile for a 50-line HTML tool?

Nothing felt right. I wanted something that felt like a native, always-on, utility that was easily accessible but invisible.

I built Buoy. It’s a minimal server that:

Lives in the status bar: I can see that it's running at a glance without hunting through ps aux.

Is persistent by default: It starts with macOS and keeps my utilities alive in the background.

Zero-config: It points at a XDG‑Standard www folder so I can create a symlink and be done.

Small: I wanted to avoid the modern bloat. Buoy is a single, self-contained binary that's under 10MB.

It’s a minimal tool that lets me build many small things and move on to the next.