My Dotfiles

What's this?

My personal macOS setup. For those who no longer find spiritual enlightenment in the 47-click System Preferences pilgrimage after each reinstall.

How This Works

The symlink architecture that makes this work:

~/dotfiles/
├── .config/              # Modern configs → symlinked to ~/.config/
│   ├── fish/            # Primary shell (vi mode, fzf, zoxide)
│   │                    # Zsh config also kept for compatibility
│   ├── zed/             # Daily driver editor
│   ├── karabiner/       # Keyboard customization
│   ├── amethyst/        # Window management
│   └── linearmouse/     # Mouse settings
├── .vimrc, .zshrc, etc  # Classic dotfiles → symlinked to ~/
├── .doom.d/             # Doom Emacs config
├── .hammerspoon/        # Hotkey automation
├── tools/               # Productivity scripts → on PATH directly
│                        # Audio conversion, doc generation, game launchers, etc
├── scripts/
│   ├── symlink-setup.sh    # Wires everything up
│   ├── macos-defaults.sh   # System preferences automation
│   ├── vscode-sync.sh      # Keeps VS Code settings in sync
│   └── fish-paths-reset.fish  # Rebuilds PATH when fish won't let go
├── Brewfile             # Every app and CLI tool
└── setup.sh             # Orchestrates it all

Private Dotfiles

Secrets, machine-specific paths and Claude config live in a second repo that isn't this one and isn't on GitHub, cloned to ~/dotfiles-private. symlink-setup.sh wires it up if it's there and shrugs if it isn't, so this repo stands alone on a fresh machine — you just get no API keys with it.

Nothing sensitive is in here. That's the whole point of the split.

Example Features

System Configuration

• macOS Defaults: Disables animations in favor of speed and responsiveness
• Key Repeat: Set to ludicrous speed for zooming around in vim
• Finder: Forces column view
• No More Accents: Disabled the accent menu that pops up when you hold a key

Productivity

• Hammerspoon: Hotkeys for essentials like:
  • super+A: Toggling between AirPods and laptop speakers (because auto switching is finicky at best)
  • super+D: Toggle dark mode
• Amethyst: Window management for keyboard-focused workflows
• Karabiner/LinearMouse: Input device customizations for maximum comfort (mouse acceleration, caps lock doubles as ESC/ctrl)

Dev Environment That Prioritizes Sanity

• Fish Shell: Primary shell with vi mode, better defaults than Zsh (which is kept for compatibility)
• Zed: The daily driver
• VS Code: Kept around because sometimes you need it
• Vim/Neovim: Vanilla is probably fine but the config lives on
• Doom Emacs: Glorified magit launcher, aka the best git client

Installation

1. Clone this thing:

   git clone https://github.com/stephenkirk/dotfiles.git ~/dotfiles

2. Run the script:

   cd ~/dotfiles
   ./setup.sh

3. Go make coffee. Or tea. Or grab a beer. This will take a bit.

The Brewfile

Peruse the Brewfile if you're curious about what I use daily. It's a mess, but it's my mess.

Customization

Fork it. Break it. Fix it. It's yours now.

Highlights

Ergonomic Keyboard Remapping

Karabiner handles the magic:

• Caps Lock (tap) = ESC, (hold) = CTRL (no more pinky destruction)
• ESC (tap) = Caps Lock, (hold) = Hyper (Shift+Ctrl+Opt+Cmd combined into one super-modifier)

Hammerspoon then uses Hyper for system-wide hotkeys that won't conflict with anything:

• Hyper+H: Show all available hotkeys
• Hyper+A: Toggle between AirPods and speakers
• Hyper+D: Toggle dark mode

Smart PR Review List

Get PRs awaiting your review as Markdown links, ready to paste — tools/to_review:

gh pr list -S "review-requested:@me" --json title,url,author \
  --jq 'map("[\"@\(.author.login): \(.title)\"](\(.url))") | .[]'

Kill All the Animations

macOS is faster when it's not busy being pretty:

defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.001
defaults write -g NSToolbarFullScreenAnimationDuration -float 0
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0

See scripts/macos-defaults.sh for the full list.