Lately I’ve been heads‑down on a complete rethink of my dotfiles setup. It’s not just a `.vimrc` collection – the goal is to treat the dev environment like any other project: reproducible from scratch, automated, and designed to scale as AI becomes a bigger part of daily work.
The core of the project is a “Spilled Coffee Principle,” which basically says that if I spill coffee on my laptop, I should be back up in an afternoon. Every configuration change is codified into scripts, not a one‑off terminal command. Setup scripts create directories, handle symlinks, document dependencies and generally remove the “Brent the bottleneck hero” problem.
Beyond that, the repo lives inside a P.P.V system (Pillars, Pipelines, Vaults) where dotfiles are one of the pillars. This structure separates foundational configs from automation pipelines and secure vaults. It forces me to think at the system level: how do all of my tools fit together, where do secrets live, and how can I onboard a new machine (or person) with a single `git clone && ./setup.sh`?
What’s really interesting is the mindset shift this has caused. I’ve been experimenting with what I call the OSE (“Outside and Slightly Elevated”) principle: moving from micro‑level, line‑by‑line coding to a macro‑level role where you orchestrate AI agents. At the micro level you’re navigating files in an editor and debugging sequentially; at the macro level you’re using tmux + git worktrees + AI coding assistants to run multiple tasks in parallel. Instead of `1 developer × 1 task = linear productivity`, you get `1 developer × N tasks × parallel execution`, which has obvious 100×–1000× potential. This OSE approach forces me to design workflows, delegate implementation to agents, and focus on the “why” and “what” instead of the “how”.
The result is that my dotfiles aren’t just about aliases anymore; they’re a platform that bootstraps AI‑assisted development, enforces good practices, and keeps me thinking about the bigger picture rather than getting lost tweaking my prompt or editor colours. I’d love to hear how others are approaching the macro vs. micro balance in their own setups.
What's the huge difference between the two pelicans riding bicycles? Was one running locally the small version vs the pretty good one running the bigger one thru the API?
Why does it matter? In a little while this will stop being a question people will ask. If anything it shows I put value into a high quality comment, that shows effort, and I also hand signed the letter form.
I guess the point about how hard it is to manually type that character is a great point though, I appreciate that!
Signed. As a US-based developer, I fully support restoring the deductibility of software development expenses. This policy change quietly gutted countless startups and engineering teams—it’s long past time we fix it.
Appreciate YC and folks like @itsluther pushing this forward. This isn’t just a tax issue—it’s about keeping innovation and talent thriving in the US. Let’s get it done.
Thank you, Simon! I really enjoyed your PyBay 2023 talk on embeddings and this is great too! I like the personalized benchmark. Hopefully the big LLM providers don't start gaming the pelican index!
How would you support someone who wanted to migrate to this and bring all their data with them? Just wondering if you build something like this hoping people start fresh, or do you build tunnels to help people migrate in and out. Kudos.
As an E15 Gen 2 owner, I'm in awe of you wizards keeping these ancient ThinkPads alive - my modern entry-level machine suddenly feels inadequate despite having 4x the processing power!
The core of the project is a “Spilled Coffee Principle,” which basically says that if I spill coffee on my laptop, I should be back up in an afternoon. Every configuration change is codified into scripts, not a one‑off terminal command. Setup scripts create directories, handle symlinks, document dependencies and generally remove the “Brent the bottleneck hero” problem.
Beyond that, the repo lives inside a P.P.V system (Pillars, Pipelines, Vaults) where dotfiles are one of the pillars. This structure separates foundational configs from automation pipelines and secure vaults. It forces me to think at the system level: how do all of my tools fit together, where do secrets live, and how can I onboard a new machine (or person) with a single `git clone && ./setup.sh`?
What’s really interesting is the mindset shift this has caused. I’ve been experimenting with what I call the OSE (“Outside and Slightly Elevated”) principle: moving from micro‑level, line‑by‑line coding to a macro‑level role where you orchestrate AI agents. At the micro level you’re navigating files in an editor and debugging sequentially; at the macro level you’re using tmux + git worktrees + AI coding assistants to run multiple tasks in parallel. Instead of `1 developer × 1 task = linear productivity`, you get `1 developer × N tasks × parallel execution`, which has obvious 100×–1000× potential. This OSE approach forces me to design workflows, delegate implementation to agents, and focus on the “why” and “what” instead of the “how”.
The result is that my dotfiles aren’t just about aliases anymore; they’re a platform that bootstraps AI‑assisted development, enforces good practices, and keeps me thinking about the bigger picture rather than getting lost tweaking my prompt or editor colours. I’d love to hear how others are approaching the macro vs. micro balance in their own setups.