#Dotfile Repos to Study

The best developers to steal from, ranked by signal density.

#Tier 1 -- canonical, heavily studied

• mathiasbynens/dotfiles -- macOS defaults, shell aliases, git config. The OG.
• paulirish/dotfiles -- Chrome DevTools engineer. Git aliases, bash functions, .inputrc.
• jessfraz/dotfiles -- Jess Frazelle (Docker, containers). Minimal, security-focused.
• holman/dotfiles -- Zach Holman (GitHub early). Topic-based organization.
• thoughtbot/dotfiles -- Agency defaults. tmux, vim, git, zsh. Production-tested.

#Tier 2 -- specialized, deep

• wincent/dotfiles -- Greg Hurrell (GitHub). Lua-based Neovim, tmux, hammerspoon.
• LukeSmithxyz/voidrice -- Luke Smith (LARBS). dwm, zsh, vim. Suckless philosophy.
• DistroTube/dotfiles -- Derek Taylor. XMonad, fish, emacs. Well-documented.
• ChristianChiaworktree/dotfiles -- Christian (ThePrimeagen). Neovim, tmux, custom.
• mitchellh/dotfiles -- Mitchell Hashimoto (HashiCorp founder). Nix, neovim, ghostty.

#Tier 3 -- language/domain specific

• fatih/dotfiles -- Fatih Arslan (Go). Go toolchain config.
• nickjj/dotfiles -- Nick Janetakis. Docker, tmux, vim, ansible.
• lewagon/dotfiles -- Le Wagon bootcamp. Clean starter for beginners.
• driesvints/dotfiles -- Dries Vints (Laravel). PHP/JS stack.

#Tier 4 -- Plan 9 / systems

• plan9port -- Russ Cox's Plan 9 from User Space. The reference.
• 9fans -- 9fans mailing list archives. Shell idioms, rc patterns.
• henesy/awesome-plan9 -- Curated Plan 9 resources.

#What to steal

1. Git aliases and config (rebase.autoSquash, rerere, merge.conflictstyle)
2. Shell functions (fzf integrations, extract, mkd, server)
3. Tmux config (prefix, pane nav, copy mode)
4. Editor config (LSP setup, keybindings, snippets)
5. Tool configs (.ripgreprc, .fdignore, bat themes)