Terminal Setup

In May of 2026, I decided to revamp my terminal setup from scratch, using some more modern tools. This is all a work in progress, and I’m not claiming any of these are the best solution to any given person’s needs. I’m just reporting what’s working for me, right now. You can find my config files here.

For reference, all of this is set up on a MacBook and tools are installed with homebrew.

Also note, I won’t be discussing my vim configuration here.

Configuration Management

I’m using chezmoi for my dotfile management. This feels like a big upgrade over my previous method, which was just using git directly. There’s a few things I really like about chezmoi’s model.

First off, I like the opt-in design, as opposed to git’s default opt-out via .gitignore. There’s a fair bit of stuff in my .conifg directory that I don’t need or want to keep in sync across my various machines, nor share in a public repo (y’all don’t need to see my Stardew Valley preferences).

I also like that it isn’t tied to my .config directory. If I want to manage a file that is just in my home directory, or in some arcane path, that’s easy enough to just add in. This feels much cleaner than turning my home directory into a git repo, or managing a bunch of symlinks (although I know there are tools that do this via symlinking which would probably also be fine). Although it hasn’t come up for me yet, I think this could be especially useful for syncing configuration of tools that are themselves in git. I’ll report back if that comes up.

Chezmoi also provides some intrinsic utility just by being a dedicated tool. Being able to list managed and unmanaged files is particularly helpful. Being able to preview config changes, do merges, and apply templates all seem useful, although I haven’t done much with those features yet.

Fonts and Colors

I use a nerdfont, because I am a nerd. As of this writing, I’m using Fira Code Mono as my main font, although I’ve used Hack in the past. I like the ligatures in FiraCode. JetBrains Mono also looks good, and I might switch to that at some point.

For colors, I use catppuccin. It’s purple-ish, dark mode (at least in the mocha variation that I use) and soft. It also has ports for tons of tools, so I can generally have the same color scheme everywhere.

Kitty and Fish

Okay, full disclosure, I picked Kitty because I’m a sucker for anything cat themed. Turns out Kitty is awesome though, so I feel like my strategy continues to be justified. I’m only using a few of Kitty’s features, but I hope to be integrating more in the future. I especially like that the very detailed config is fully text based, and well documented.

Fish has been my shell of choice for at least a decade. It has good out-of-the-box behavior and is easy to configure. Fish has smart autocomplete, a much more readable scripting language than bash, and a lot of quality of life features I enjoy.

One thing I’ve particularly liked in fish is the abbreviation system. Fish supports aliases like bash does, but it also has abbreviations, which are subtly different. Basically, an abbreviation gets expanded in the prompt, instead of behind the scenes in the shell. This means your shell history has the full command, not just the alias, which can be helpful. It also means you can write partial abbreviations that can be context-sensitive, such as the git sub commands.

Starship Prompt

Starship is a shell independent prompt system written in Rust. It’s got a nice text-based modular configuration system, which feels nice. There’s a catppuccin theme for it, naturally. It has all the features I’d expect from a modern prompt already set up: Python Virtual Env integration, git information, shortened directory listings, VI mode display, etc.

Tool Upgrades

These are some upgrades to basic shell utilities that I’ve been getting some good results with:

• Instead of ls, try lsd.
• Instead of cat, try bat.
• Instead of grep, try rg
• Instead of cd, try zoxide

Snippet Management

Finally, I’m using pet for command line snippet management. This has quite a few advantages over just finding things in my history. First off, it’s synced across my machines (pet has a built-in sync via GitHub gists, but I’m syncing it via chezmoi since I already have that setup). It supports desciptions and search, so I can actually find the snippet I want. This pairs especially nice with fzf, since I only need to set up a complicated fzf pipeline once, and then I can save it for easy future use.

Conclusion

The terminal continues to be a relevant dev tool, and it’s worth taking the time to make your environment work for you. Like having a comfortable office, making your terminal more pleasant to use will make working in it slightly more enjoyable. And who doesn’t need more joy in this world.