How powermise uses mise

powermise is a window onto mise, not a replacement for it. Four rules keep it that way.

1. mise owns its state

powermise learns what’s installed by running mise’s JSON commands — mise ls, mise outdated, mise registry, mise doctor, and others — from your home directory. It changes things only by running mise: mise use, mise upgrade, mise uninstall, mise self-update. It never edits a mise config file itself, so mise’s own rules (pins, file layering, trust) always apply.

2. You see every command first

Before anything changes, powermise shows the exact command. While it runs, you see mise’s own output. Stop cancels it — including any downloads mise started. The History screen keeps a list of everything that ran.

3. Nothing is trusted for you

mise refuses to load a project’s config until you trust it, because configs can set environment variables and run hooks. powermise keeps that boundary: before asking, it reads the config itself — without running anything — and shows its hooks, the files it loads, the variables it sets, and its tasks. It never trusts a folder on its own.

4. Your terminal keeps working

There’s no powermise database of your tools. Close the app and mise still has everything; open a terminal and mise ls shows what powermise showed you.

Things to know

Settings in your shell files

Apps opened from the Dock or Finder don’t load ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc, so powermise can’t see MISE_* variables you export there. Put mise settings in ~/.config/mise/config.toml (under [settings]) and both the app and your terminals will use them. powermise does add the usual install locations — ~/.local/bin, Homebrew — to its own PATH so it can find mise.

Which mise version

• 2026.10 or newer is recommended. powermise is designed around it, and every feature is available.
• 2026.7.18 is the minimum. Older-but-supported versions work; features that need newer mise are switched off with a note saying why. AI Setups are one of them: they need 2026.10.

Health shows your version and offers mise self-update.

Which config powermise changes

Installing from Discover or a tool page sets your global default (mise use -g). Projects that ask for a specific version keep it. On a project’s page, Add Tool and environment changes run inside that folder and edit its own config (mise use, mise set --file …).

Applying an AI setup is the one time powermise writes a mise config file itself: conf.d/powermise-<name>.toml in your mise config folder, and only that file. It then runs mise bootstrap --yes --only packages,tools. See From the terminal.