May 23, 2026

thoughts: The dotfiles card image is uncannily real

I keep staring at the new dotfiles project card image, generated by GPT, and getting a little mind-blown. Not only is every bit of text actually real text rather than the usual AI gibberish, the content itself coheres: the Ghostty window on the left shows plausible git aliases, the tmux pane in the middle has a believable folder listing, a git log, and a btop-style stats block, and the Emacs frame on the right has elisp in init.el and YAML in config.yml that kinda parse as real config.

And on top of that, Ghostty, tmux, and Emacs are exactly the tools I actually use, even if I haven't reached for those particular git aliases in a long, long time.

Generated overhead shot of a desk with three terminal windows showing Ghostty git aliases, tmux with folder listing and btop stats, and Emacs with elisp and YAML config — The dotfiles card image, with text that is somehow all real and coherent.

Still huh. Genuinely surprised by how far this has come.

Earlier in thread

Nicholas Clooney May 23, 2026 · 21:14

feature: Ghostty and Emacs polish in dotfiles

I shipped v2026.05.2 of dotfiles as a follow-up polish pass on yesterday's tmux and Emacs reset.

This release adds a basic macOS Ghostty config, restores a bunch of the small Spacemacs habits I still wanted like fuzzy M-x, Helm buffer switching, avy motion, kj insert escape, project ripgrep search, restart and pasteboard bindings, plus YAML mode for config editing.

I also tightened the repo's own agent and release docs with AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, and a clearer note that these tags are chronological snapshots rather than semver, which makes the setup feel more intentional and easier to keep evolving.

Nicholas Clooney May 22, 2026 · 10:54

blog: My AI-Assisted Terminal Setup: Subspace Emacs and a Tmux Layout Shortcut

I published My AI-Assisted Terminal Setup: Subspace Emacs and a Tmux Layout Shortcut, the fuller write-up that ties together the tmux 70/20/10 layout and the move off Spacemacs into Subspace Emacs. It covers how Claude and Codex split the work between research and implementation, the tmux-as-TDD-harness approach that unblocked the layout binding, and the tmux/tmux#1839 discovery that finally let swap-pane preserve zoom state. This supersedes the two narrower notes from earlier today.

Nicholas Clooney May 22, 2026 · 10:42

post: Building a Lightweight Emacs Config After Spacemacs

I published Building a Lightweight Emacs Config After Spacemacs, the fuller write-up I promised when I shipped the dotfiles update earlier today. It walks through why I left Spacemacs, what I kept (Evil, leader keys, Magit, Helm-style tracked file finding, early theme loading), and how the new ~/.emacs.d is organized as a small set of explicit modules instead of a framework.

Nicholas Clooney May 22, 2026 · 10:01

feature: Lightweight Emacs migration and tmux workflow

I shipped v2026.5.1 of dotfiles, which pairs a nicer tmux workflow with the move away from the old Spacemacs setup into a smaller hand-rolled Emacs config. The tmux side gives me a one-keystroke 70/20/10 vertical layout plus a safe top-and-middle pane swap, while PR #2 keeps the core editor ergonomics I care about like Evil, leader keys, Magit, Helm-style tracked file finding, and early theme loading without the extra framework machinery. This is the point where the repo feels easier to understand and own, and I want to do a fuller write-up on the tmux and "Subspacemacs" workflow soon.