dotfiles

From factory reset to coding in five minutes.

My personal Mac setup. One command to go from zero to a fully configured machine.

curl -fsSL https://fmontes.com/install.sh | bash

This clones the repo to ~/.dotfiles and runs the installer.

• Zsh with Oh My Zsh, Starship prompt, autosuggestions, syntax highlighting, atuin history
• Homebrew packages and casks via Brewfile
• Aliases split by context — work aliases stay local, not committed
• Git with delta for diffs, gh-dash for PR reviews
• mise for managing Node, Python, and Java versions
• Fresh for terminal code editing and browsing
• AI skills, instructions, and subagents for agentic coding harnesses
• macOS defaults for Dock, Finder, keyboard

git clone https://github.com/fmontes/dotfiles ~/.dotfiles
cd ~/.dotfiles
./install.sh

The script will:

1. Install Xcode Command Line Tools
2. Install Homebrew and all packages from Brewfile
3. Symlink all dotfiles to ~/
4. Install Oh My Zsh
5. Set up mise and install Node and Python
6. Apply macOS defaults
7. Install gh-dash, global npm packages, fix permissions, set up the VS Code CLI
8. Sync AI agent config to every platform with chai

These steps require human interaction and can't be automated:

• Install 1Password and sign in first
• Generate SSH key: ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your@email.com" and add to GitHub
• Update ~/.gitconfig with your name and email
• Run gh auth login
• Run atuin login (optional, for cross-machine history sync)
• Sign in to Raycast to restore extensions

Fresh is the terminal editor used for code editing and browsing. Launch with fresh . from any project. No config file fiddling required.

All AI agent config lives in ai/ as a single source of truth:

• ai/instructions/ — shared instructions (AGENTS.md)
• ai/skills/ — agent skills (one folder per skill)
• ai/subagents/ — custom subagent definitions

I author the config once and let chai distribute it to every agent platform — Claude, Codex, Droid, OpenCode, and Antigravity — instead of hand-maintaining each one's config files. The manifest lives in home/chai.toml (symlinked to ~/chai.toml).

install.sh runs chai update && chai sync for you, so a fresh machine is ready with no extra steps. Afterwards, the loop for changes is:

# 1. Edit the source of truth
$EDITOR ai/instructions/AGENTS.md      # or add a skill/subagent under ai/

# 2. Distribute to every platform listed in chai.toml
chai update   # clone/pull any external deps first (skills from other repos, etc.)
chai sync     # copy instructions, skills, and subagents into each platform's config dir

chai sync uses hash-based dirty detection: if an agent edited its copy, it prompts before overwriting. Add --dry-run to preview changes or --force to skip the dirty check. Because ai/ is the only place you edit, every machine and every agent stays in sync from one commit.

Skills can also come from other people's repos. Declare them under [deps] in chai.toml — chai update clones each to ~/.chai/deps/, and [skills] paths reference them with @name. Current external skills: impeccable, frontend-slides, and dev-browser.

The skills are also installable standalone in any project, without chai:

npx skills add https://github.com/fmontes/dotfiles/tree/main/ai --skill <skill-name>

See the skills README for the full list.

dotfiles/
├── Brewfile                  # Homebrew packages and casks
├── bootstrap.sh              # Remote entry point (curl | bash)
├── install.sh                # Local installer
├── scripts/                  # Individual setup steps
├── ai/                       # AI tooling
│   ├── skills/               # Agent skills (any agentic harness)
│   ├── instructions/         # Reusable prompt instructions
│   └── subagents/            # Custom subagent definitions
└── home/                     # Dotfiles (mirrored to ~/)
    ├── .zshrc
    ├── .gitconfig
    ├── chai.toml             # AI config sync manifest (~/chai.toml)
    └── .config/
        ├── zsh/
        │   └── aliases.zsh   # Git + misc aliases
        └── starship.toml     # Starship prompt config

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

Run this before committing whenever you install new tools.