MacStack

Setup and update the tech stack on a Mac with one command, based on your stack configuration:

• 🐚 Shell customizations (prompt, paths, functions, aliases, environment)
• 🐙 Global git configuration
• 📰 Fonts
• ⌨️ Command line tools (like brew, git, pyenv, python, claude-code)
• 🍏 Graphical apps (including Mac App Store apps)
• 🤖 Settings and permissions of AI agents (Gemini CLI, OpenCode, Cursor CLI)
• ⚙️ Settings and keybindings for Zed and most VS Code based IDEs
• 🧩 Extensions for VS Code based IDEs
• 📂 git repositories (clone, sync, list issues)

Get Started

1. Install and configure MacStack (also installs Homebrew if absent):

   curl -fsSL https://macstack.dev/setup.sh | zsh

2. Configure your stack in your chosen stack folder. An example is the Nohype AI Stack
3. If your stack includes Mac App Store apps, connect your iCloud account
4. Apply your stack configuration by running mack update or simply update

Note: Whether you want to set up a fresh Mac or want to repeatedly update your established Mac, mack update is idempotent and works for both cases. That means it's safe to use and only overwrites things you define in your stack. It preserves everything else – even individual pre-existing entries in dotfiles.

What Does mack update Do?

Generally

• 🐚 Ensure ~/.zshrc loads (sources) the MacStack shell customizations
• 🍺 Update Homebrew itself
• 🍺 Update Homebrew packages that were already installed
• 🍺 Clean up Homebrew system: delete old package versions and cache
• 🐙 Ensure a ~/.gitignore_global exists
• 🐙 Set necessary global git settings plus some basic best-practice ones in ~/.gitconfig.
• 🍏 Make mack command available system-wide, offering several subcommands, including:
  • mack update (or just update): trigger this whole update process
  • mack help (or just mack): show all available mack commands

Based On Your Stack

Here is what mack update does wherever it finds the respective inputs in your stack configuration folder.

All these configuration files and folders in your stack are optional. You can add what you want when you want it:

• ⚙️ macstack.json: Load the contained basic configuration options, based on this JSON schema
• 🐚 bin/: Add it to PATH so you can place your custom commands there (scripts, binaries)
• 🐚 zshrc.sh: Ensure it gets sourced from ~/.zshrc to apply your shell customizations
• 🍺 Brewfile: Ensure all declared Homebrew packages are installed
  • 📰 Fonts
  • ⌨️ Command line tools
  • 🍏 Mac App Store apps
  • 🧩 VS Code extensions
• 🐙 macstack.json: Apply the contained personal global git settings to ~/.gitconfig
• 📜 update.sh: Run this custom update step
• ⚙️ zed/*: Update configuration of Zed
  • zed/settings.json
  • zed/keymap.json
• ⚙️ vscode/*: Update configuration of VS Code, Cursor, Antigravity, Kiro, Windsurf, VSCodium
  • vscode/settings.json
  • vscode/keybindings.json
• 🤖 ai/coding/*: Update AI coding agent configurations
  • Cursor CLI, Cursor IDE
    • ai/coding/cursor/cli-config_template.json
      • ⚠️ Don't simply copy your whole ~/.cursor/cli-config.json here since that contains semi-sensitive infos
    • ai/coding/cursor/rules/*
  • Gemini CLI
    • ai/coding/gemini/settings.json
    • ai/coding/gemini/policies/*
  • OpenCode, OpenCode Desktop
    • ai/coding/opencode/opencode.json
• 📁 git/repos-folder-template: Clone/sync git repos based on this template, then report which repos need manual attention
  • Template defines content of this folder: git.repos_folder defined in macstack.json
  • Each folder in the template may contain a git-repos.txt listing URLs of intended repos in that folder