Refactoring My Emacs Configuration with Claude Code

I’ve had to declare “configuration bankruptcy” a few times now,1 each time promising myself this would be the clean, well-organized config I’d maintain going forward. And each time, within months, my init.el would devolve into a sprawling maze of half-commented code blocks and sections titled things like “Misc” and “TODO: organize this.” In 2022, I made a serious attempt to fix this. Sunday afternoons at a local coffee shop became my ritual - laptop open, config file sprawled across my screen, the goal clear: create a well-documented, properly organized init....

January 2, 2026 · 10 min · Timothy Johnson