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
./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, Neovim plugins, and borrowed Claude Code skills.
• Claude Code skills, homegrown and borrowed. Mine live in config/claude, symlinked into ~/.claude alongside my settings and statusline. Other people's I install from their source repos with npx skills, 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, one directory per tool. The steps symlink most of them into ~ and ~/.config.
• 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 different tools and some config I'd rather not publish. Rather than fork, I keep the work-only bits in a second, private repo with its own steps/ directory, cloned by hand to ~/.dotfiles-ferocia. On a work machine, which install recognises by its hostname, a step in that repo replaces the one here with the same name. So work gets its own Brewfile, Mise config and AI tools, everything else is shared, and no work config lands in a public repo.