dots

My dotfiles for my NixOS setup: the dotfiles root. This repo holds the files; it does not place them. Home-manager, in the NixOS config, wires them into $HOME.

Layout

Each top-level dir is one application's package. Its tree mirrors where the files appear under $HOME:

<pkg>/.config/<app>/...   →   ~/.config/<app>/...

Which paths are actually linked is the link set, declared in homes/modules/dotfiles.nix: a shared layer every host gets, plus a per-host layer on top. A file here that no entry names is not linked anywhere; adding a package means adding an entry there and rebuilding once.

The links are out-of-store symlinks: ~/.config/<app> resolves to this directory, not to a copy in the Nix store. Editing a file here takes effect immediately, with no rebuild, and applications that rewrite their own config keep working. That is deliberate — store copies were considered and rejected for machines I sit at, so don't "fix" it. See the NixOS config's ADR-0001 for the reasoning and the glossary for the terms.

Bootstrapping a new machine

This directory must exist at ~/dots before the first rebuild. Syncthing is what puts it there. Nix cannot verify it: if it is missing, the rebuild succeeds anyway, every link dangles silently, and the applications fail obscurely (defaults, or errors reading their config) rather than loudly.

Packages

Pkg	App	Linked	Notes
fish	fish shell	~/.config/fish/	Vi keys, zoxide-shadowed cd, FZF widgets, custom yt_chat / yt_summarize functions wrapping the claude CLI.
niri	niri Wayland compositor	~/.config/niri/, plus ~/.config/niri-host.kdl	config.kdl includes split files under dms/ (binds, outputs, windowrules, …). Driven by DMS. Each host gets its own host/<host>.kdl (layout, touchpad) at the canonical name niri-host.kdl.
DankMaterialShell	DMS niri shell	~/.config/DankMaterialShell/	Settings, themes, plugin metadata.
nvim	Neovim	~/.config/nvim/	LazyVim base. User plugins in lua/plugins/, config in lua/config/.
wezterm	WezTerm	~/.config/wezterm/	wezterm.lua loads keys.lua and sets color_scheme = "dank-theme" from colors/dank-theme.toml.
herdr	herdr agent multiplexer	config.toml only	See note below.
git	git	config and ignore only	The directory takes git's runtime state (credential store, gitk), so the two files are linked alone.
qutebrowser	qutebrowser	~/.config/qutebrowser/, plus userscripts/	Multi-file config split across appearance, privacy, filepicker, binds, search_engines. Themes under themes/. Only userscripts/ is linked under ~/.local/share/qutebrowser, whose history and caches stay out of here. See deps below.
mpv	mpv	~/.config/mpv/	mpv.conf + input.conf.

Directories are linked whole unless they hold runtime state, because an application that saves by writing a temp file and renaming it over the target destroys a file-level link.

Note

~/.config/herdr/ is also herdr's runtime state dir (*.sock, session.json, logs), so only config.toml is linked rather than the whole directory.

Unlinked dirs

• syncthing/ — Shared .stglobalignore across all Syncthing folders/hosts. Not in the link set; placed by hand per Syncthing folder — see syncthing/README.md.
• helium/ — Browser extension settings (vimiumc), imported by hand in the browser rather than linked.
• wallpapers/ — Wallpapers, stored as lossless JPEG XL in Git LFS (needs git-lfs; .githooks/pre-push uploads them). DMS points at them directly via its saved wallpaperPath, so nothing links them.
• docs/ — Written for agents working in this repo, not symlinked anywhere. agents/ says where issues live and how the triage labels and domain docs are read; adr/ records decisions that are hard to reverse.
• .claude/ — Repo-specific Claude Code skills, one per package. The global ignore drops /.claude wholesale, so .gitignore re-includes skills/ on its own.
• .githooks/ — Pre-commit syntax/format checks for staged configs (stylua, fish -n, niri validate, …). Enable once per clone with git config core.hooksPath .githooks.
• screenshots/ — Preview images.

Application-written state

Config directories are linked whole, so anything an application writes at runtime lands here too. That is contained with ignore rules rather than by linking individual files:

• git — .gitignore, so git status reports only what is authored here.
• Syncthing — syncthing/.dotsignore, so each host keeps its own copy instead of receiving the other's.

Both lists must stay in step. The load-bearing case is niri/.config/niri/dms/outputs.kdl: DMS regenerates it from the compositor's live outputs, so syncing it hands the laptop the desktop's monitor layout.

Screenshots

qutebrowser (everforest)	menu

qutebrowser deps

Detach videos (download + play locally):

• mpv
• yt-dlp
• mpv-sponsorblock

Bitwarden:

• rofi
• tldextract
• pyperclip
• bitwarden-cli

Note

Bitwarden setup still flaky — slow, doesn't autofill on many sites. Testing rbw workaround

Adblock:

• adblock
• Run :adblock-update in qutebrowser to refresh lists.

Spellcheck (en-US):

"$(find "$(nix-store --query --outputs "$(which qutebrowser)")" -iname 'dictcli.py' | head -1)" install en-US