Welcome @jlmorone – I hope Tinderbox grows into a valuable part of your tool shop.
My research is focused on history, with methods evolved over several decades in corporate and government life. Though my tool shop has a lot of software in it, similar to your tools list along with a lot of niche products, 90% of what I do is happens inside the tool shed in the illustration.
Of course, reading and research comes into the shop from the left and final work products exit to publication on the right. The illustration doesn’t show iteration back and forth between the tools, because that would be too many arrows. The arrows shown illustrate a key foundational element that I require from software, the ability to flow information from one tool to another, usually by indexing. We’re not yet in a perfect world of information integration between tools, but we’re better off than we were. I also want tools to link resources among one-another. Again, this part of the research toolset world is not perfect, but it is getting better. In the context of my own methods, Tinderbox has made some progress on indexing, and excels at linking. YMMV of course depending on one’s own methods.
The best advice for getting started with Tinderbox – start with an interesting, easily fenced project and explore. Don’t try to learn all the features of the software all at once. Let your work guide you toward the need for a feature and discovery of features in Tinderbox that can satisy that need.