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Recipe: personal workstation (Jarvy as dotfiles bootstrap)

Problem

You get a new laptop — or reset the one you have — and lose an afternoon reinstalling Homebrew, nvim, tmux, your shell, gh, language runtimes, and setting git config user.email again. You want one command to bring a fresh machine back to the exact tools + git identity you use daily.

Jarvy's team-onboarding flow works just as well for a team of one. Keep a jarvy.toml in your dotfiles repo; jarvy setup reconciles the machine against it.

Config

Full file at examples/personal-workstation/jarvy.toml. Excerpt:

~/dotfiles/jarvy.toml
[privileges]
use_sudo = false

[provisioner]
zsh = "latest"
starship = "latest"
tmux = "latest"            # default_hook installs TPM
nvim = "latest"            # default_hook seeds ~/.config/nvim/init.lua
fzf = "latest"
zoxide = "latest"
atuin = "latest"
git = "latest"
gh = "latest"
ripgrep = "latest"
bat = "latest"
eza = "latest"
delta = "latest"
jq = "latest"

rust = { version = "stable", version_manager = true }
node = { version = "22", version_manager = true }
python = "3.12"
go = "latest"

docker = "latest"
kubectl = "latest"
k9s = "latest"

[git]
user_name  = { env = "GIT_USER_NAME",  default = "Your Name" }
user_email = { env = "GIT_USER_EMAIL", default = "[email protected]" }
default_branch = "main"
pull_rebase = true

[git.aliases]
st = "status -sb"
lg = "log --graph --oneline --decorate --all"
amend = "commit --amend --no-edit"

[commands]
reload = "jarvy setup"
drift  = "jarvy drift check"
update = "jarvy update"

Usage

# One-time on a fresh machine
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Cliftonz/jarvy/main/dist/scripts/install.sh | sh
git clone <your-dotfiles-repo> ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles
export GIT_USER_NAME="Jane Doe"
export GIT_USER_EMAIL="[email protected]"
jarvy setup

Later, after editing jarvy.toml:

jarvy run reload    # re-runs `jarvy setup`
jarvy run drift     # what changed on disk vs the baseline?

Why this shape works

  • env with default in [git] — you can commit this file to a public dotfiles repo without leaking your email. The env vars fill in at setup time; the default is a placeholder.
  • version_manager = true on rust / node — installs via rustup / nvm instead of the OS package, so you can switch versions per-project later without fighting the system installer.
  • tmux and nvim ship default_hooks that seed a minimal config (TPM for tmux, a starter init.lua for nvim) only if none exists. They never overwrite your dotfiles.
  • [commands] turns muscle-memory ops into jarvy run reload / jarvy run drift so you don't memorize a second CLI.

Extending

  • Add AI hooks so Claude / Cursor share the same guardrails across every repo you open on this machine.
  • Add MCP registration to auto-register the Jarvy MCP server with every AI agent CLI you install.
  • If you juggle work + personal identities, use roles: role = "personal" by default, jarvy setup --role work when you need the work git identity + tools.
  • Quickstart — the 5-minute version
  • Roles guide — split work vs personal
  • Drift — detect when a hook or another tool changed your machine behind Jarvy's back