Tips

A curated, growing index of terminal tricks, repo features, and bundled-tool basics. Read on GitHub, or run tips in a shell to print them.

Start here: Tip 20.1 — Working with the dotfiles repo — edit, reload, re-apply. The single most useful tip if you've cloned this repo and don't know where to begin.

Tips are split into category files under tips/. The leading two-digit prefix puts them in a meaningful "decade":

• 1x — Terminal: general tricks + standalone CLI tools
• 2x — Repo features (custom aliases, functions, scripts in this repo)
• 3x — Zsh ecosystem
• 4x — Infrastructure tooling (kubernetes, kafka — optional installs)
• 5x — IDEs and editors
• 6x — Web tools (bookmark-style references)

Numbering is <FILE>.<N>, e.g. Tip 22.3 lives in tips/22_dev_infra.md. The tips shell function takes the same selectors:

tips                  Print all tips
tips <FILE>           Print all tips in that file (e.g. tips 22)
tips <D>x             Print every file in a decade (e.g. tips 2x)
tips <FROM>-<TO>      Print every file in an explicit range (e.g. tips 20-24)
tips <FILE>.<N>       Print a single tip (e.g. tips 22.3)
tips -l [<sel>]       List titles only; selector is optional
tips -h               Help

1x — Terminal

• 10. Terminal — keyboard shortcuts, history expansion, background jobs, clipboard piping
• 11. Text tools — jq, fzf, ag
• 12. Project workflow CLIs — gh, git-secret, direnv, fnm

2x — Repo features

• 20. Shell & repo workflow — dot, reload, dotfiles, file/dir helpers, q editor, eachdir, isip
• 21. Git — workflow helpers, repo diagnostics
• 22. Local dev infra — docker, kubernetes (kdel*), kafka, throwaway Postgres
• 23. JVM — jdk switching, Maven OpenRewrite recipes
• 24. Claude Code integration — sync-claude-deny, sort-claude-settings, check-md-limits, claude-settings-merge, skill-trigger-eval, ai, pre-commit automation, shared ~/.claude config and skills

3x — Zsh ecosystem

• 30. zsh — oh-my-zsh + vendor plugins (autosuggestions, syntax-highlighting, completions)

4x — Infrastructure tooling (optional)

• 40. Kubernetes CLI — kubectl, kubectx, kube-ps1, k9s
• 41. Kafka CLI — topics, console consumer, console producer

5x — IDEs and editors

• 50. IntelliJ IDEA — configuration — semantic highlighting, Rainbow Brackets, Key Promoter X, auto-import
• 51. IntelliJ IDEA — usage — Search Everywhere, Recent Files, refactoring, stack traces
• 52. Sublime Text — Package Control, q/qq snippets

6x — Web tools

• 60. Web tools — regex visualisers, Monkeytype, Kafka Streams Topology Visualiser