What is dotfiles CLAUDE.md?

Instructions for Nick Nisi’s dotfiles repository, which stores personal settings for tools such as the shell, Neovim, tmux, Ghostty, Git, and Claude Code.

Use them when adding or changing dotfiles, applying the repository setup, or locating shell, editor, terminal, Git, and Claude Code settings.

They explain where configuration files belong and how the repository links them into the home directory. This reduces mistakes when setting up or changing the machine’s development environment.

dotfiles CLAUDE.md — Instructions file for coding agents by nicknisi: Instructions for Nick Nisi’s dotfiles repository, which stores persona

About the project

nicknisi/dotfiles is a personal collection of configuration files and setup scripts for tools such as Neovim, zsh, Git, tmux, and Homebrew. It helps its author bootstrap and maintain a development machine, with a devcontainer for checking portable terminal settings. The catalogue entries extend the repository’s setup and coding-agent workflow.

nicknisi/dotfiles · 2,987 stars · on GitHub

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods

npx agentmods add instructions/nicknisi/dotfiles/claude-md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nicknisi/dotfiles

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/nicknisi/dotfiles/claude-md.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/nicknisi/dotfiles/claude-md)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/nicknisi/dotfiles/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/nicknisi/dotfiles/claude-md.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 285 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 285 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan B 1 finding. Scan, not verified.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00285	$0.00285
Opus 5	$0.00143	$0.00143
Sonnet 5	$0.00057	$0.00057
Haiku 4.5	$0.00028	$0.00028

Measured 3d ago against content hash 4457b04b996f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

dotfiles CLAUDE.md scanned grade B with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Reads agent configuration directoriesmediumAgent snooping

.claude/, .codex/, .gemini/ hold keys, settings and other credentials a mod has no legitimate need for.

- Claude Code settings live in `home/.claude/settings.json` → `~/.claude/settings.json`

CLAUDE.md · 27 lines

What it actually says

Dotfiles

Nick Nisi's dotfiles repo. Manages configs for zsh, neovim, tmux, ghostty, git, and Claude Code.

Structure

home/ — Files symlinked to ~/ (dotfiles like .zshenv, .claude/)
config/ — App configs symlinked into ~/.config/ (nvim, tmux, zsh, git, etc.)
bin/ — Scripts added to $PATH (claude-statusline, git helpers, etc.)
tools/ — Tooling and helpers

Setup

mise bootstrap --yes --skip-dirty                 # Converge the machine
mise bootstrap dotfiles apply                     # Link all packages
mise bootstrap dotfiles apply ~/.config/nvim      # Link one package
mise bootstrap dotfiles unapply                   # Remove links

Key conventions

config/ dirs map 1:1 to ~/.config/<name>/
home/ entries are symlinked directly to ~/
Claude Code settings live in home/.claude/settings.json → ~/.claude/settings.json
Shell entry point: home/.zshenv → ~/.zshenv, loads config/zsh/.zshrc

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

3d ago Changed · +4 tokens per session 4457b04b996f
5d ago First seen · 27 lines · 281 tokens per session scan B aaeebf7cae6a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dotfiles CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository nicknisi/dotfiles (2,987 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 285 tokens to every session, about $0.0014 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (reads agent configuration directories). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Git and workflow homebrew neovim tmux vim zsh

dotfiles CLAUDE.md