Package ownership and convergence

One owner per executable

Package lists are declarations, not a list of commands to run manually. A package should have one manager owner so upgrades and PATH selection stay predictable.

Owner	Manifest	Intended contents
Homebrew	packages/Brewfile	system tools, formulae, casks, development SDKs
cargo-binstall	packages/cargo.txt	release-binary Rust CLIs
npm under nvm	packages/npm.txt	Node CLI tools, Codex, browser CLIs
uv tool	packages/pip.txt	isolated Python CLI environments
Go	packages/go.txt	Go command-line tools
agent config	package lists beside installers	plugins, extensions, MCP endpoints, skills

The Cargo manifest states why it excludes tools without release binaries (source). The npm manifest similarly makes Codex npm-owned while install/codex.sh owns its configuration and health check (source).

How convergence works

Bootstrap installs Homebrew before language runtimes, then invokes Python, Node, Rust, Go, Julia, Lean, and TeX in a fixed order (source). The Node installer keeps nvm’s selected binary ahead of a Homebrew Node, because native npm add-ons are tied to the Node ABI (source). The Python installer puts each CLI tool in its own uv environment, while the managed python wrapper uses one interactive environment (source).

When adding a tool, identify the executable, the owner, the supported platform, and a meaningful health check before changing a list. Do not install the same CLI with both Homebrew and npm, pip and uv, or Cargo and a tap merely because both work. Use package setup for current commands and updates for routine reconciliation.

# Inspect declared ownership before changing it.
rg -n '(^|/)tool-name([ @#]|$)' packages install home
./tests/ci.sh full