working-with-miselisted

# Working with mise ## Overview mise is a polyglot tool version manager. Use this skill when: - Adding tools to a project via mise - Troubleshooting "command not found" when mise should have tools available - Deciding whether mise is the right choice for a dependency ## The Iron Rules 1. **Use `mise use` to add tools** - never manually edit config files 2. **Detect existing config files first** - don't create new ones when one exists 3. **Fix the shell, don't workaround** - if tools aren't on PATH, diagnose the activation issue rather than using `mise exec` as a permanent workaround ## When to Use mise vs Alternatives ### Use mise when version matters per-project Tools where different projects need different versions: - Language runtimes: node, python, ruby, go, rust - Infrastructure tools: terraform, kubectl, helm - Tools with breaking changes between versions ```bash # Good mise candidates - version sensitivity mise use node@20 # Projects may need different Node versions mise use terraform@1.5 # IaC often pins specific versions mise use ruby@3.2 # Gemfiles often require specific Ruby ``` ### Use Homebrew/system when version rarely matters Stable CLIs with consistent interfaces across versions: - jq, yq - query languages are stable - gh, hub - GitHub CLI - ripgrep, fd - search tools - tree, htop - system utilities ```bash # Better as Homebrew - version doesn't matter brew install jq gh ripgrep ``` ### Decision checklist Ask yourself: 1. Does this proje