Tools

I’ve been using the same .zshrc for years. And my .vimrc. And my tmux config. Over time they’ve grown into a carefully tuned system that does exactly what I want. The problem: I have multiple machines. A laptop, a desktop, sometimes a VM for testing. And keeping everything in sync was always… improvised. Finding the right dotfile management solution took me years. I tried everything. And I mean everything. The Long Search It started with the classic: a bare git repo in my home directory. git init --bare ~/.dotfiles, some aliases, done. It works, but it’s fragile. One wrong git clean and you’ve nuked your configs. And good luck with machine-specific settings. ...

There’s a moment when everything clicks. You plug in your YubiKey, type your PIN once, and then everything just works. SSH to servers? No password. Sign git commits? Automatic. Get a password from pass? Touch the key and done. That moment took me about three evenings of frustration to reach. But now that it works, I never want to go back. Why This Setup? I had a problem: too many authentication methods. ...

For context on how my brain works, see Working with an AuDHD Brain. This is the stack that structures my daily work: taskwarrior for task management, timewarrior for time tracking, and vit as a vim-style interface. Together they form a keyboard-first, terminal-native productivity system. No Electron apps. No cloud sync sending your data to Silicon Valley. Just plain text, local, and blazing fast. Why This Stack? I struggled with task management for years. Todoist, Things, Notion, Obsidian plugins — tried them all, eventually abandoned them all. The problem was always the same: too much friction. ...