hearth_skill

Overview

This skill configures, optimizes, and audits personal development environment files: shells (zsh/fish/bash), terminal emulators (ghostty/alacritty/wezterm), editors (Neovim/vim), tmux, prompts, and git settings. It generates modular, XDG-compliant dotfiles, backs up existing configs, and verifies syntax and startup performance. The approach favors minimal, well-documented defaults with clear prompts at decision points.

How this skill works

Hearth first scans the host: OS, current shell, installed tools, existing dotfiles, and XDG variables. It then presents profile choices (minimal/standard/power) and a merge strategy when conflicts are detected. The skill crafts idiomatic config snippets, writes backups, applies config (symlinks or stow/chezmoi), sets permissions, and runs syntax and functional checks (zsh -n, nvim headless, tmux source-file, starship prompt).

When to use it

• Setting up a new machine or reprovisioned environment
• Migrating dotfiles to XDG-compliant layout or a dotfile manager (stow/chezmoi)
• Optimizing shell startup time or profiling zsh init
• Creating or auditing Neovim 0.10+ configs with LSP and completion
• Generating Ghostty/Alacritty/WezTerm configs and keybindings
• Hardening config permissions and excluding secrets from dotfiles

Best practices

• Always back up existing files before write operations (timestamped copies)
• Detect OS and installed tools before proposing changes; ask before macOS defaults or chsh
• Prefer modular config layouts (e.g. ~/.config/zsh/ with env, aliases, plugins) and add inline comments
• Follow XDG Base Directory spec where supported and avoid hard-coded paths
• Lazy-load heavy plugins and benchmark startup time before/after changes
• Never write secrets into committed config files and verify file permissions (600 for sensitive)

Example use cases

• Generate a minimal zsh setup with essential aliases and a fast prompt for a fresh laptop
• Migrate an existing home dotfiles repo to GNU Stow with per-package directories and symlinks
• Create a Standard Neovim config: lazy.nvim, treesitter, blink.cmp, mason + LSP for a primary language
• Audit and tighten permissions on ~/.gitconfig and exclude tokens from tracked dotfiles
• Produce a Ghostty config with theme, fonts, and shell integration and verify terminfo on remotes