dotfiles

Personal macOS dotfiles, symlinked into $HOME with GNU Stow.

Restore on a fresh machine

Only two things have to happen by hand, because nothing exists yet:

xcode-select --install
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

git clone https://github.com/lawandothman/.dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
~/.dotfiles/dot init

dot init runs every step below, in order. Each one checks before acting, so re-running it is safe.

Step	Does
Homebrew	installs it if missing
Brewfile	brew bundle — formulae, casks, fonts
Stow dotfiles	symlinks home/ into $HOME
Herdr plugins	herdr plugin install — the installs themselves are not tracked
mise tools	mise install — node, bun, pnpm, go, terraform
TypeScript LSP	global typescript 7, which nvim runs as tsc --lsp
macOS defaults	key repeat, press-and-hold, text substitutions, Dock, Finder
fish login shell	adds fish to /etc/shells, then chsh
SSH key	ed25519, and prints where to paste the public half
Berkeley Mono	clones the private font repo and installs it

Skip steps with --skip-ssh, --skip-shell, --skip-font and --skip-macos.

The macOS step only writes settings this setup actually deviates from Apple's defaults on, so it is safe to re-run. Key repeat and text substitution changes finish applying after a logout.

dot doctor reports what is present and what is missing without changing anything.

One thing dot cannot do

Secrets. ~/.config/fish/conf.d/secrets.fish sources ~/.local/share/secrets/env.fish, which is not in this repo.

Berkeley Mono is paid, so it comes from a private repo rather than a cask — the font step needs the SSH key to be on GitHub first, which is why it runs last. Symbols Nerd Font Mono is in the Brewfile.

First Neovim launch

lazy.nvim clones the plugins on first start. Then:

:Lazy sync       " install and update plugins
:Mason           " mason-tool-installer fetches the LSP servers + stylua
:checkhealth     " verify nvim + lsp are healthy

Day-to-day

Edit any config in place — it is a symlink into this repo, so the change is already there for git diff. Commit and push from ~/.dotfiles.

A new file created inside an already-stowed directory (~/.config/fish, ~/.config/nvim, ~/.config/ghostty) lands in this repo automatically. To track a path that is not yet stowed, add it under home/ and run dot stow.

~/.config/herdr is deliberately not folded — the running server keeps sockets and logs there, so only config.toml and bin/ are symlinked and the runtime files stay out of the repo.

After installing or removing tools, refresh the Brewfile snapshot:

brew bundle dump --force --file=~/.dotfiles/Brewfile

Then review the diff — this repo is public, so strip anything work-specific or private before committing.