lisa-setup-local-env

name	lisa-setup-local-env
description	Bring a developer's machine in…
allowed-tools	["Bash","Read","Skill"]

Setup Local Environment: $ARGUMENTS

Make this machine match what the project says it needs.

Why this exists separately

remoteEnv.tools was always the manifest for every surface, and the executor always understood local. What did not exist was a way to ask for it. The only path ran a file named setup-remote-env.mjs, out of a directory named lisa-remote-env, via a skill named lisa-setup-remote-env — and it only existed at all once someone had provisioned a remote environment, because that is what writes it into the repository.

So the machine most likely to be missing a tool was the one with no way to ask about it.

This skill is that surface. It adds no manifest, no pins, and no installer: it imports the ones the remote flow owns. A second installer would be a second thing to keep honest, and the one people run least is the one that rots.

Usage

node scripts/local-env.mjs                  # report what diverges
node scripts/local-env.mjs --install-tools  # install what is missing
node scripts/local-env.mjs --json           # machine-readable plan

Exit status is non-zero when a tool cannot be resolved, so this is usable as a gate.

What differs from a container

Two things, and both are because a person is here.

Consent. A container is disposable and provisions itself silently — that is the whole point of it. A laptop belongs to someone, and putting pinned binaries into their ~/.local/bin uninvited is not ours to decide. Nothing installs until --install-tools. Reporting happens either way, because knowing the machine diverges from what the project declares is most of the value.

The pin is a floor, not an equality. A container should hold exactly the pinned version; it exists to be reproducible. A developer's machine is shared with every other project they work on, so installing a pinned binary ahead of a newer one already on PATH is a downgrade this project imposed on all of them. A newer tool is reported as newer and left alone. Older, or absent, is an install.

Platform pins

An install entry either serves every platform — true of npm-global and nothing else — or declares a platforms map keyed <platform>-<arch>, each block carrying its own install method, url, and sha256:

{
  "name": "gh",
  "version": "2.83.0",
  "platforms": {
    "linux-x64":    { "install": "release-tar", "url": "...linux_amd64.tar.gz", "sha256": "...", "binary": "gh_2.83.0_linux_amd64/bin/gh" },
    "darwin-arm64": { "install": "release-zip", "url": "...macOS_arm64.zip",    "sha256": "...", "binary": "gh_2.83.0_macOS_arm64/bin/gh" }
  }
}

The method lives inside each block because it varies: gh publishes a .tar.gz for Linux and a .zip for macOS, so a single method would have forced one platform onto an archive kind its vendor does not ship.

When a tool has no block for the running platform, this skill says so and stops there. It will not guess a download URL — a guessed artifact is one the checksum cannot vouch for, and the checksum is the only thing standing between a pinned entry and whatever a URL serves today. Add the block, or install that one tool however the platform normally would.

Detect before you install

Run /lisa:detect-tooling when the report looks thin. The manifest is the only thing that puts a binary on PATH, and nothing populates it automatically — so a project ships npm scripts invoking maestro, wires an MCP server whose CLI it also shells out to, and configures Playwright thresholds, while remoteEnv.tools stays empty and each of those fails at the moment of use instead of at setup.

The detector proposes and a human decides. It writes nothing, so a tool still only ever reaches a machine from a reviewed, pinned, checksummed entry.

What it will not do

• No unpinned installs. Every install goes through the same assertPinned gate the remote flow uses, and the same in-process checksum verification, which refuses before unpacking.
• No package-manager fallback. Shelling out to Homebrew would give no version pin and no checksum, which is the property this design exists to enforce.
• No writes to the manifest. Proposing entries belongs to /lisa:detect-tooling; deciding belongs to a human reviewing a diff.