tai/research/shell-multiplexer-auto-attach/github-pyenv-wiki-unix-shell-initialization.md

Unix shell initialization (pyenv wiki)

Metadata

Field	Value
Institute	Molodetz Institute — Research & Retrieval Division
Subject	shell-multiplexer-auto-attach
Document type	Source Dossier
Tier	1
Source title	Unix shell initialization
Source URL	https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv/wiki/Unix-Shell-initialization
Source publisher / author	pyenv project (community wiki)
Source type	repository
Source date (published)	Unknown — not stated
Date researched	2026-10-10
Researched by	tai (agent), model: Claude Sonnet 5, on behalf of retoor
Research method	web search synthesis
Confidence	Medium
Status	Active

Summary

A third-party wiki page (maintained by the pyenv project, not the fish-shell project) laying out a fuller ordering of fish's startup-file reads: system and user conf.d snippet directories, vendor_conf.d, then /etc/fish/config.fish, and finally ~/.config/fish/config.fish last — consistent with, and more detailed than, the official fishshell.com docs' own statement that config.fish runs after conf.d snippets so it can override them.

Key findings

• ~/.config/fish/config.fish is the last file read in fish's startup sequence, meaning anything it does (including tai's plexer-wrap exec) runs after every other conf.d snippet and vendor config has already had a chance to run — relevant if another tool's fish integration also lives in conf.d and expects to run before an exec replaces the shell process.
• The ordering list itself (system conf.d → user conf.d → vendor_conf.d → /etc/fish/config.fish → ~/.config/fish/config.fish) could not be independently confirmed against the official fishshell.com docs within this search; the search tool's own synthesis explicitly flagged this as "secondary, not confirmed against the official docs."

Pros / strengths

• Goes into more structural detail than the official docs' own high-level statement, which is useful context even though it isn't independently verified here.

Cons / limitations / caveats

• Third-party, community-maintained wiki content, not primary vendor documentation — explicitly treated as secondary per the quality bar in this archive's own README (confidence ratings are honest, not reassuring). The core fact this project actually relies on (config.fish is always sourced, and sourced last) is corroborated by the official docs (fishshell-docs-3-4-index-initialization-files.md) independently of this page.

Relevance to tai

Secondary corroboration, not a load-bearing fact on its own: reinforces that writing the tai hooks into config.fish (rather than a conf.d snippet) means they run after everything else, which is the right place for an exec-based wrap to live (nothing else gets a chance to run after it anyway, by definition).

Changelog

Date	Change
2026-10-10	Initial dossier created.