Not every developer task needs a framework or a package install. Sometimes you just have a CSV export that something else needs as JSON, or an HTML file that's bigger than it should be before it goes live. These are the kind of five-minute jobs that don't deserve five minutes of setup.

Converting CSV to JSON (and JSON to CSV)

This comes up constantly - a client hands you a spreadsheet export and your app expects JSON, or the reverse: an API gives you JSON and someone in a non-technical role just wants to open it in Excel. Doing this by hand with a script every time gets old fast for a one-off file.

The main thing to watch for either direction is nested data - a JSON object with arrays or nested objects inside it doesn't map cleanly onto a flat spreadsheet row, so a decent converter needs to flatten that structure into columns you can actually work with, rather than just dumping an error.

Minifying HTML before deployment

This one's easy to skip and also easy to regret skipping. Raw HTML with full indentation, comments, and line breaks adds up, especially on a page with a lot of markup. Minifying strips all of that out without touching how the page actually renders - it's a quick, low-risk way to shave some load time off a static page, particularly useful right before you deploy something that needs to feel snappy.

One thing worth double-checking afterward: if your HTML has inline