dot-bootstrap

One-shot setup for a new machine. Personal — clones tiotoi/dotfiles (private), runs its installer, wires the brain MCP, and verifies everything works.

One-liner

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tiotoi/dot-bootstrap/main/install | bash

Preview first:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tiotoi/dot-bootstrap/main/install \
  | bash -s -- --dry-run

What it does

1. Prereq check — git, ssh, python3 (stdlib only, no pip needed).
2. Brain transport check — verifies ssh -o BatchMode=yes lab true works. Advisory only: install proceeds even if SSH isn't configured yet.
3. Clone or pull dotfiles into ~/dotfiles (or $DOTFILES_DIR).
4. Run install.sh from the dotfiles repo — symlinks every tracked file into $HOME (Claude skills, subagents, brain bridge, hooks, helper bins).
5. Wire Claude hooks — merges brain SessionStart + Stop entries into ~/.claude/settings.json if not already present (backs up to .bak first).
6. MCP smoke test — runs bridge.py initialize and checks the response.

Idempotent: re-running is safe.

Flags

Flag	Effect
--dry-run	Print what would happen, change nothing.
--no-claude-hooks	Skip wiring brain hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json.
--force	If $DOTFILES_DIR exists but isn't a git repo, back it up to .bak and clone fresh.
--help	Show help.

Pass flags through bash -s --:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tiotoi/dot-bootstrap/main/install \
  | bash -s -- --dry-run --no-claude-hooks

Env overrides

Var	Default	Use when
DOTFILES_REPO	git@github.com:tiotoi/dotfiles.git	Cloning a fork or a different dotfiles repo.
DOTFILES_DIR	$HOME/dotfiles	Installing the repo somewhere other than ~/dotfiles.
BRAIN_SSH_HOST	lab	The SSH alias the brain transport uses.

BRAIN_SSH_HOST=my-other-host curl -sSL .../install | bash

Prerequisites for the brain MCP

The brain bridge SSHes into the brain host and reads its bearer token there. Nothing secret travels to the client. For the bridge to work on a new machine, that machine needs:

• Host lab (or your $BRAIN_SSH_HOST) configured in ~/.ssh/config.
• An SSH key authorized on the brain host.
• Tailscale (or LAN) reachability to the brain host.

If any of these isn't ready, the install still completes — the bridge files get installed; the smoke test just gets skipped. Fix SSH and re-run.

What's tracked in this repo

Just the install script and this README. No personal data, no IPs, no hostnames beyond the generic lab SSH alias, no tokens. The script is short enough to review in full before running.

Audit trail

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tiotoi/dot-bootstrap/main/install | less

— or read it on GitHub before piping to bash.