sync-claude-folder

A CLI tool that syncs the dot_claude source in a dotfiles repository to ~/.claude and ~/.claude-work, following chezmoi-like naming conversion rules.

Background

• Materializes ~/repos/dotfiles/home/dot_claude (chezmoi source) into ~/.claude.
• Also syncs the same content to ~/.claude-work (used with a separate account), while protecting auth/runtime data.
• Does not use chezmoi itself — this tool performs chezmoi naming conversion (dot_/private_/executable_/readonly_ subset) and JSON transforms (remove/set/merge).

Setup

cp config.example.json config.json
# Edit config.json to match your environment
pnpm install

Usage

sync

Calculates a sync plan (create/update/delete/skip) for each stage defined in config.json. Defaults to dry-run (plan display only); files are written only when --apply is specified.

# Show plan for all stages (dry-run)
pnpm sync

# Specific stage only
pnpm sync -- --stage dotfiles-to-claude

# Apply changes
pnpm sync -- --apply

# Use a different config
pnpm sync -- --config ./config.json --apply

Before writing or deleting, existing files are backed up to ~/.sync-claude-backup/<timestamp>/<relPath> (default; override with --backup-root).

config.json

Copy config.example.json to config.json and edit to match your environment. config.json is gitignored because it contains machine-specific paths and credentials.

• stages[].source / dest: source/destination directories (~ expansion supported)
• chezmoiNaming: whether to convert source names from chezmoi naming to real names
• mirror: whether to delete real-name files inside managed that no longer exist in source
• managed: real-name globs to sync and mirror
• ignore: globs to ignore on the source side (evaluated against pre-conversion source names)
• protected: globs always excluded from create/update/delete on the dest side
• transforms: remove/set/merge operations applied to JSON files

See config.schema.json for the full schema.

Development

pnpm lint   # prettier + eslint + tsc
pnpm fix    # prettier + eslint --fix
pnpm test   # jest