Background: I've been building openboot for the Mac setup side of this problem — getting a new machine configured in minutes instead of hours. The agent integration came later when I noticed the same trial-and-error pattern showing up in Claude Code.
Happy to answer questions about how the dep detection works. That part was more interesting to build than the rule file itself.
I've wiped and rebuilt my Mac probably 20+ times over the years. Every time I told myself "this time I'll write a proper setup script." Every time it turned into a 300-line bash file that broke 6 months later because some brew formula renamed itself or Oh-My-Zsh changed their install URL.
Then I looked around. Brewfile handles packages but not your shell, not your macOS prefs, not your dotfiles. chezmoi handles dotfiles but not packages. nix-darwin handles everything but good luck onboarding a junior with it.
Nothing just does the whole thing. So I built it.
brew install openbootdotdev/tap/openboot
The thing that a Brewfile doesn't solve: shell config, macOS prefs, dotfiles, and the fact that non-terminal people on your team can't edit YAML. So I added a web dashboard where you can build a config visually and share it as a URL for team onboarding.
There's also openboot snapshot which scans your current machine and captures everything into a shareable config. Handy when someone on the team already has the "golden" setup.
Go + Charmbracelet for the TUI. MIT licensed, no telemetry, macOS only.
Curious what everyone here does for Mac setup. I've seen people go all the way from "I just wing it" to full nix-darwin flakes. What's your approach?
Hi HN, I built OpenBoot because I was tired of spending half a day setting up every new Mac.
The problem: you get a new machine (or wipe yours), then spend hours running brew install 50 times, cloning dotfiles, configuring your shell, setting macOS preferences. I've done this enough times to automate it.
OpenBoot is a single curl command that gives you an interactive TUI to pick from 70+ curated dev tools across 3 presets (minimal, developer, full). CLI tools install in parallel (4x), GUI apps install sequentially since they need password prompts. Anything already installed gets skipped. It also sets up Oh-My-Zsh with sensible aliases, deploys your dotfiles via GNU Stow, and configures developer-friendly macOS preferences.
There's also a web dashboard at openboot.dev where you can build a custom config, import from a Brewfile, and share it with your team via a short URL.
Tech stack: Go + Charmbracelet (bubbletea) for the TUI, SvelteKit + Cloudflare for the web. MIT licensed, zero telemetry.
Some things I'm still working on: the TUI interactive package selector isn't shown in the README demo yet (it's the best part, working on a better recording). Rollback support is half-built. Linux support isn't planned — this is intentionally macOS-only.
Happy to answer questions about the implementation or take feedback.
Happy to answer questions about how the dep detection works. That part was more interesting to build than the rule file itself.
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