Sovereign Tools

Building a clean macOS development environment that survives migrations, upgrades, and your future self.

  1. 01 I Rebuilt My Mac Around Four Layers published A DFU restore forced me to decide which tool owns each part of my development environment—and how I would rebuild it.
  2. 02 Dotfiles Without .zshrc: ZDOTDIR and chezmoi published Move zsh config out of the home directory with ZDOTDIR, split it into modules, and manage it declaratively with chezmoi so drift becomes visible.
  3. 03 The Brewfile Compromise: Eventual Consistency for Mac Apps published Not every layer deserves strict declarative management. The app layer is fine with eventual consistency, as long as the drift stays visible.
  4. 04 Making mise and uv Agree on Python published uv had installed a Python that mise did not know about. Setting python-preference to only-system restored one clear owner, with a few consequences for existing projects.
  5. 05 When to Let the Official Tool Win published Don't put every language under mise. One test decides who owns runtime versions: does the language ship a strong, official tool of its own?
  6. 06 One Architecture, Many Languages published A practical reference for applying the same four-layer architecture to Node, Java, Swift, Rust, Go, and Ruby.
  7. 07 Configuration Is Easy; Maintenance Is the Work published A clean development environment drifts quietly. These small checks make that drift visible before cleanup becomes a project of its own.