Managing Personal Dotfiles with Yadm

This skill manages personal dotfiles using yadm (Yet Another Dotfiles Manager).

Note: For work-specific dotfiles (Spotify GHE), use the managing-work-dotfiles skill with yadm-work commands.

Repository Info

• Remote: Your dotfiles git repository

• Work tree: $HOME

• Yadm repo: ~/.local/share/yadm/repo.git

Getting Current State

Always start by checking the current state:

yadm status # Show modified/staged files yadm ls-files # List all tracked files yadm diff # Show unstaged changes

Managed Files Reference

Run yadm ls-files to get the authoritative list. Common categories:

Category Files

Shell .config/fish/ (config.fish, aliases, env, functions, keybindings, plugins)

Editor .vimrc , Library/Application Support/Code/User/ (settings.json, keybindings.json)

Terminal .tmux.conf , .config/ghostty/config , .config/starship.toml

Git .gitconfig , .gitignore , .gitmodules

Claude .claude/skills/ (commit, creating-pull-requests, managing-dotfiles)

Yadm .config/yadm/ (bootstrap, hooks, README, install-hooks.sh)

Other .config/bat/config , .config/ruff/pyproject.toml , .duti , .hushlogin , Caddyfile

Core Operations

Pull from Remote

yadm pull

If merge conflicts occur:

• Run yadm status to see conflicted files

• Edit files to resolve conflicts (remove conflict markers)

• Stage resolved files: yadm add <file>

• Complete the merge: yadm commit

Commit and Push Changes

yadm add <file> # Stage specific file yadm add -u # Stage all modified tracked files yadm commit -m "message" # Commit with message yadm push # Push to remote

Commit conventions (from commit skill):

• No AI/Claude attribution

• No Co-Authored-By headers

Modify Configuration Files

When asked to modify a config (e.g., "update tmux to do X"):

• Find the relevant file: yadm ls-files | grep -i tmux

• Read and understand the current config

• Make the requested changes

• Stage, commit, and push: yadm add <modified-file> yadm commit -m "Update <config> to <what was changed>" yadm push

Adding/Removing Files

Add a new file to tracking

yadm add <new-file> yadm commit -m "Add <file> to dotfiles" yadm push

Stop tracking a file (without deleting it)

yadm rm --cached <file> yadm commit -m "Stop tracking <file>" yadm push

Pre-commit Hooks

Pre-commit is configured via ~/.pre-commit-config.yaml . Hooks check for:

• Private keys and secrets

• Large files (>500KB)

• Trailing whitespace

• Merge conflicts

Run manually:

yadm enter pre-commit run --all-files

If a commit fails due to pre-commit fixes, stage the fixes and retry.

Self-Management

This skill is itself tracked by yadm at ~/.claude/skills/managing-dotfiles/ .

When updating this skill:

• Make changes to the skill files

• Commit with yadm: yadm add ~/.claude/skills/managing-dotfiles/ yadm commit -m "Update managing-dotfiles skill" yadm push

When files are added/removed from yadm tracking, update the "Managed Files Reference" section above if the categories change significantly.

Useful Commands

See yadm-command-reference.md for a quick reference of common yadm commands.

Bootstrap (New System Setup)

On a new system after cloning:

yadm bootstrap

This runs ~/.config/yadm/bootstrap which installs Homebrew, uv, vim-plug, and other dependencies.