Portable Baseline Pattern Extraction
When managing config across multiple machines, separate portable baseline settings (safe on any system) from machine-specific wiring (hooks, plugins, paths). Read all target files in parallel to identify shared patterns, then use canonical resolution methods (e.g., uv python find or command -v) as the single source of truth. Wire machine-specific hooks sequentially into the template to avoid conflicts. Verify with grep to ensure no execution calls leak into portable templates.