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init.el

init.el is deliberately tiny. Its only jobs are:
  1. Register MELPA, MELPA-stable, and NonGNU ELPA as fallback archives for anything Nix does not ship.
  2. Put lisp/ on the load-path.
  3. Point custom-file at var/custom.el so M-x customize has somewhere to scribble.
  4. Handle the bootstrap guard for the first run after just clean-all.
  5. require each module in the right order.
Everything else — GC, encoding, theme, modeline, keybindings, package configuration — lives in early-init.el or one of the lisp/init-*.el modules.

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Package archives

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa"        . "https://melpa.org/packages/")        t)
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa-stable" . "https://stable.melpa.org/packages/") t)
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("nongnu"       . "https://elpa.nongnu.org/nongnu/")    t)
Nix (or the devenv shell in development) provides most packages via load-path, so use-package finds them without touching the network. The archives above only come into play for packages that Nix does not ship.

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Load path

(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "lisp" user-emacs-directory))

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Custom file

(setq custom-file (locate-user-emacs-file "var/custom.el"))
custom.el is write-only: Jotain never loads it back. The declarative config in git remains the single source of truth; the file exists only so M-x customize has somewhere to scribble without touching init.el.

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Bootstrap guard

After just clean-all removes elpa/ and friends, the package-quickstart file can be absent or broken from a partially-completed prior bootstrap. init.el detects this with a simple heuristic (diminish not yet installed) and, on that run only, disables package-quickstart, wipes any stale package-quickstart.el(c), runs package-initialize once, and regenerates the quickstart file at the end of startup.

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Module loading

init.el then requires each module in order. See Modules for what each file owns and the full load order. 
(require 'init-core)         ; GC, encoding, no-littering, sane defaults
(require 'init-keys)         ; Global keymap and leader-key setup
(require 'init-ui)           ; Theme, modeline, fonts, frame tweaks
(require 'init-help)         ; helpful + built-in help tweaks
(require 'init-editing)      ; Electric pairs, delsel, whitespace, region tools
(require 'init-completion)   ; Vertico, marginalia, orderless, consult, corfu
(require 'init-navigation)   ; Dired + dirvish, project, windmove, winner
(require 'init-vc)           ; vc + magit + diff-hl + forge
(require 'init-prog)         ; prog-mode, treesit, eglot, flymake, eldoc, compile
(require 'init-project)      ; project + projection + compile-multi
(require 'init-ai)           ; claude-code-ide, gptel, mcp
(require 'init-shell)        ; eshell, vterm, comint
(require 'init-systems)      ; sops, logview, auth-source-1password
(require 'init-tracking)     ; keyfreq, wakatime, activity-watch
(require 'init-writing)      ; jinx, markdown-mode, denote, pdf-tools
(require 'init-org)          ; org, org-modern, capture templates

(require 'init-lang-nix)
(require 'init-lang-rust)
(require 'init-lang-python)
(require 'init-lang-web)
(require 'init-lang-devops)
(require 'init-lang-data)
(require 'init-lang-systems)
Last modified on April 8, 2026