Building a Complete Developer Terminal Setup for Claude Code — Part 6: Dotfiles and Wrap-up

#claude #cli #tooling #tutorial

A setup you can't reproduce is a setup you'll eventually lose. Hard drives fail, Macs get replaced, and without a dotfiles repo everything built in this series disappears with them. This final part covers packaging everything into a maintainable dotfiles repo and wrapping up the series.

The Dotfiles Repo

A dotfiles repo is a version-controlled collection of your configuration files. The goal is simple: clone the repo on a new machine, follow the checklist, and have a fully configured environment in under an hour.

mkdir ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles
git init

Copy all configuration files in:

# Claude Code
mkdir -p .claude/hooks
cp ~/.claude/statusline.sh .claude/statusline.sh
cp ~/.claude/hooks/notify-stop.sh .claude/hooks/notify-stop.sh
cp ~/.claude/hooks/notify-permission.sh .claude/hooks/notify-permission.sh
cp ~/.claude/settings.json .claude/settings.json

# Terminal
cp ~/.tmux.conf .tmux.conf
cp ~/.zshrc .zshrc

# Starship
mkdir -p .config
cp ~/.config/starship.toml .config/starship.toml

Commit and push:

git add .
git commit -m "Initial dotfiles — Claude Code, tmux, starship, zsh"
gh repo create dotfiles --private --source=. --push

File Structure

dotfiles/
├── README.md
├── .tmux.conf
├── .zshrc
├── .config/
│   └── starship.toml
└── .claude/
    ├── settings.json
    ├── statusline.sh
    └── hooks/
        ├── notify-stop.sh
        └── notify-permission.sh

Fresh Machine Checklist

The README in the repo contains the full step-by-step setup guide. The checklist at the end covers every action in sequence:

[ ] Install Homebrew
[ ] Install core dependencies: brew install git jq node fzf
[ ] Install iTerm2 and set JetBrains Mono Nerd Font
[ ] Set terminal type to xterm-256color
[ ] Import tokyo-night color theme
[ ] Install zsh-autosuggestions and zsh-syntax-highlighting
[ ] Install fzf and run key bindings setup
[ ] Install starship and apply tokyo-night preset
[ ] Install tmux and clone tpm
[ ] Copy .tmux.conf and install plugins with Ctrl+B I
[ ] Install Claude Code
[ ] Copy .claude/settings.json, statusline.sh, and hook scripts
[ ] chmod +x the statusline and hook scripts
[ ] Add plugin marketplaces in Claude Code
[ ] Install all 9 plugins and reload
[ ] Verify plugin counts: 9 plugins · 35 skills · 18 agents · 10 hooks · 2 plugin MCP servers · 1 plugin LSP server
[ ] Verify claude-mem worker at http://localhost:37777
[ ] Test sound notifications with afplay
[ ] Test statusline with mock JSON input
[ ] Create tmux sessions and save layout with Ctrl+B Ctrl+S

What I'd Do Differently

If I were starting this setup from scratch with the knowledge I have now, I'd install claude-mem and pyright-lsp on day one. They have the highest ongoing return of anything in the stack — persistent memory and real-time type checking compound in value over time in a way that one-time tools don't.

I'd also build the statusline earlier. Flying blind on token usage and rate limits for the first weeks of Pro plan use cost me more than the hour it took to write the script.

The one thing I'd skip entirely is trying to get visual notification banners working. osascript and terminal-notifier are both unreliable on macOS Sequoia. afplay is the right answer and I should have gone there first.

The Full Stack

Layer	Tool	Purpose
Terminal	iTerm2 + tokyo-night	True color, Nerd Font support
Multiplexer	tmux + resurrect	Persistent sessions, 3-pane layout
Prompt	Starship tokyo-night	Git, Python, time at a glance
Shell	zsh + autosuggestions + fzf	Faster command entry
AI IDE	Claude Code	Primary development tool
Statusline	Custom bash script	Real-time token/cost/rate limit visibility
Hooks	`afplay` sound notifications	Async task completion awareness
Plugins	9 curated plugins	Code review, memory, type checking, workflow
Config	Private dotfiles repo	Reproducible setup in under an hour