Dotfiles

Structure | Design | Installation | Notes

Grant McDermott's personal dotfiles, managed with GNU Stow.

Structure

dotfiles/
├── shell/          → ~/.zshrc, ~/.p10k.zsh
├── R/              → ~/.Rprofile, ~/.lintr, ~/.radian_profile
├── nvim/           → ~/.config/nvim/
├── ghostty/        → ~/.config/ghostty/
├── claude/         → (not stowed; see below)
└── README.md

Each top-level directory is a stow "package". Stow creates symlinks from ~ that point into this repo, so the repo is always the source of truth.

Design principles and ergonomics

My major goal for these configs is improved efficiency and consistency. I want to reduce typing, re-use the same patterns and shortcuts across programs (and operating systems), and generally make a keyboard-centric workflow as enjoyable as possible. With that in mind, here are a few design principles that run across all of my configs:

• Vim-style navigation everywhere, e.g. Alt+h/j/k/l for Raycast window halves (macOS), Ctrl+j/Ctrl+k in Telescope.
• Simple and consistent mnemonics, e.g. in Neovim our Space-leader bindings follow a <Space><noun><verb> pattern. So <Space>ff for find file, <Space>gg for git (lazygit), etc. Full table in nvim/README.md.
• IDE-familiar shortcuts — Cmd+/ (macOS) or Ctrl+/ (Linux) toggles comments, Cmd+Enter / Ctrl+Enter sends to the REPL. Mirrors Positron / VS Code muscle memory.

Installation

Setup

Assuming you have installed the prerequisites (below) simply clone the repo and stow the packages you want:

git clone https://github.com/grantmcdermott/dotfiles.git ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles
stow shell R nvim ghostty

This creates symlinks like ~/.zshrc → ~/dotfiles/shell/.zshrc, ~/.config/nvim → ~/dotfiles/nvim/.config/nvim, etc.

If stow complains about existing files, back them up first:

mv ~/.zshrc ~/.zshrc.bak
mv ~/.config/nvim ~/.config/nvim.bak
# etc.

Tip: Preserve your private shell settings in ~/.zshrc.local

Stowing shell will replace your existing ~/.zshrc with a symlink to my version here. While stow will force you to back up your existing config to ~/.zshrc.bak, this still means that any settings in your old file won't be picked up. That includes sensitive or machine-specific things that shouldn't live in a public repo anyway (e.g. employer tooling, credentials, API keys, etc.)

One solution is to manually copy over these old (machine-specific) settings to ~/.zshrc. But a better solution, which we adopt here, is to create a companion ~/.zshrc.local file. This file will be automatically sourced at the end of .zshrc, but is never tracked in git. Sourcing a local override file is a widely-used convention in the dotfiles community, and it cleanly separates what is shared (this repo) from what is private (your machine).

Important: You must create ~/.zshrc.local yourself. After stowing, rescue any machine-specific settings from your backup:

touch ~/.zshrc.local

Open ~/.zshrc.bak and copy over anything specific to this machine rather than general shell setup. Look for:

• Tool environment setups (e.g. . "$HOME/.cargo/env", . "$HOME/.local/bin/env")
• Machine-specific PATH exports (e.g. Homebrew, system paths)
• Employer-specific tooling and integrations
• SSH key loading
• Editor shell integrations (e.g. Kiro, VS Code)
• Language-specific environment variables (e.g. JAVA_HOME, GOPATH)
• CODECOMPANION_AGENT, e.g. set to "kiro" or "claude_code" to enable the

For example:

# AI agent for CodeCompanion.nvim
export CODECOMPANION_AGENT=claude_code

If your backup is long, an AI assistant can help. Try:

Here is my old ~/.zshrc.bak. Extract only the machine-specific settings that don't belong in a shared dotfiles repo — tool environments, PATH additions, employer tooling, etc. Format them as a clean ~/.zshrc.local and skip anything already covered by a standard Oh My Zsh setup.

Prerequisites

In order to clone my setup exactly, you need the following:

• Ghostty — my favourite terminal emulator
• GNU Stow — what manages the symlinks
• MesloLGS Nerd Font — for Powerlevel10k glyphs
• Oh My Zsh + Powerlevel10k + zsh-autosuggestions + zsh-syntax-highlighting
• Neovim (≥ 0.10) — my primary editor and what much of my config is built around
• ripgrep, fd, lazygit — used by Neovim plugins

You can either click on these links to install everything manually, or expand the installation tl;dr blocks below to get to get the appropriate shell commands for your OS.

Installation tl;dr

macOS

brew install neovim lazygit ripgrep fd stow
brew install --cask font-meslo-lg-nerd-font ghostty raycast

Raycast config lives in its internal database, not in dotfiles; see raycast/README.md for the export/import workflow.

Arch Linux

# Core tools
sudo pacman -S neovim lazygit ripgrep fd stow ghostty ttf-meslo-nerd zsh
# If ghostty is not in the repos yet:
# yay -S ghostty

# Oh My Zsh + Powerlevel10k + plugins
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyz/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git \
  ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-$HOME/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions \
  ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git \
  ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

Ubuntu

Note: I haven't tested these; please let me know if they work for you.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install lazygit ripgrep fd-find stow zsh
# `fd` is installed as `fdfind` on Debian/Ubuntu; alias it if you like:
#   ln -s $(which fdfind) ~/.local/bin/fd

[!IMPORTANT] Ubuntu's default apt repos usually ship an older Neovim than this config requires. Install a current release from the Neovim releases page or via the unstable PPA.

Ghostty and the Meslo Nerd Font aren't in the default apt repos. Install them from their upstream sources:

• Ghostty: https://ghostty.org/download
• MesloLGS Nerd Font: https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases (grab the Meslo.zip release and drop the .ttf files into ~/.local/share/fonts, then fc-cache -fv)

My config also reflects that I use a lot of R (mostly) and Python in my daily workflow. You only need these extra bits if you plan to stow the equivalent components on your machine:

R and Python (optional)

• R — requires R itself. The primary R workflow is through Neovim (R.nvim + Air + Jarl; see nvim/README.md), so no extra terminal REPL is strictly needed. If you also want a nicer REPL when launching R directly from the terminal or VS Code, install arf — the R/.config/arf/ config here enables vi mode and matches the old radian setup. The .Rprofile also auto-starts a btw MCP session if the package is installed (optional, for AI tooling).
• Python — requires uv on PATH for uv.nvim and the iron.nvim Python REPL. Install with curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh.

Notes

• The Neovim config is adapted from Josean Martinez's excellent guide.
• The claude/ directory contains Claude Code / Kiro CLI configuration and is not stowed automatically since its target path varies by setup.