Pete's dotfiles

I've been refining these dotfiles since 2010. They do 80% of the work of setting up a Mac the way I like it:

xcode-select --install
git clone https://github.com/notahat/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
cd ~/.dotfiles
DOTFILES_ENV=home ./install

I keep them lean. Anything I stop using I delete, so what's left is what I run every day.

Highlights worth stealing

• A tiny install you can read. ./install runs plain-bash steps from steps/. It symlinks config into place, and it's idempotent, so I re-run it any time I add a step. If a config file already exists, it warns and skips rather than clobbering it.
• A clear rule for Homebrew vs. Mise. Homebrew installs anything I always want at the latest version (apps, CLI tools, even Mac App Store apps). Mise manages anything I need pinned to a particular version, like language runtimes.
• Zsh that starts in under 100ms. A Starship prompt, fzf-tab completion, and syntax highlighting, wired up by hand in config/zsh.
• Neovim, under 100ms too. LSP, Treesitter, and fuzzy finding, with the UI stripped back so the code is the only thing on screen. It's commented throughout and has its own README.
• One command to update everything. ./upgrade bumps Homebrew packages, Mise tools, and Neovim plugins.
• Claude Code skills, homegrown and borrowed. Mine live in config/claude, symlinked into ~/.claude alongside my settings and statusline. Other people's I pull from their source repos at install time, so I'm not redistributing anyone's work.

It's all MIT licensed, so take what's useful.

How it works

./install runs the steps in steps/, each a small bash script that installs a tool and symlinks its config. Run them all, or one at a time:

./install         # everything
./install zsh     # just the zsh step
./install -h      # usage, and the list of steps

The pieces:

• config/: every config file, symlinked into ~ and ~/.config by the steps.
• environments/: the Brewfile and mise.toml for my home machine. Work machines use a different pair. See below.
• project-templates/: drop-in editor and tooling config for new Rails and Vite projects.

Work machines

I use these dotfiles at work too, where I need a few extra tools and some config I'd rather not publish. Rather than fork, I keep the work-only bits in a second, private repo and set DOTFILES_ENV=ferocia (my employer) on those machines. steps/ferocia.bash clones that repo to ~/.dotfiles-ferocia, and the other steps pull config out of it with link_ferocia_file. So I run the same dotfiles on both machines, and no work config lands in a public repo.