Your computer as a machine

A machine can declare self: true: your own computer, the one running the CLI. This page explains why that exists, why it is called self and not local, and what changes about sync and setup.

Why self, not local

machines create-local already means something else: a small VM made on your computer that stands in for a real server while you learn or test the CLI. It has its own address, port, root login and key, and its own setup, exactly like a real server — it only happens to live here.

self is different: your own computer, right now, with no address to dial and no key to install. Reusing “local” for both would make two ideas share one word, and the first time someone typed the wrong one, they would find out the hard way.

Why no address fields

hosts, user, port and key describe how to reach a machine that is not your computer. A self machine has nothing to dial, no login, no key to install, so devmachine refuses all four if you try to set them, naming the field:

machine "mac" is your computer (self: true), so it has no hosts: remove it

The same reason is why a workspace can never live on a self machine: a workspace is a Linux account reached over SSH with a key the CLI installed, and your own computer has no account system or SSH server for that.

Why it never needs sudo for the work itself

Homebrew, mise and Claude all live under your own home folder on a Mac, and none of them need root, so a self machine’s setup never asks for extra permissions. It only runs on macOS — nothing about this path has been tried anywhere else — and stops with a clear error elsewhere.

Why setup prints the Homebrew command instead of running it

Ansible cannot install itself. On a real server, setup bootstraps a key, proves it, locks the server down, then installs Ansible. None of that applies to your own computer, so setup here only checks two things: is Homebrew on PATH, and is Ansible.

If Homebrew is missing, setup prints the official one-line install command from brew.sh and stops rather than running it, since that command asks for sudo — and asking for your password on your own computer, without you typing it, is not something this CLI does. Once Homebrew is there, setup runs brew install ansible itself, since that part needs no extra permission.

sync follows the same rule: with no ansible-playbook on PATH, it stops before touching anything and points you to setup.

Where files end up, and why not /opt

On a real server, devmachine’s files live at /opt/devmachine, root’s territory, which is fine since setup already has full control of a server it set up deliberately. On a Mac, /opt needs sudo, running into the same rule as Homebrew — not this CLI’s place to ask.

So on a self machine, those files live under your own home instead:

$HOME/.local/share/devmachine/bundle