Working in a Shell

The clamity CLI and other functions run within a shell environment. There's a myriad of ways to setup and use your shell environments. These observations and principals have served me well.

You should know...

Your login shell is your parent environment under which everything you do will operate. This includes applications run from launchpad on a mac or gnome on a linux workstation, as well as the environment you get when you open a terminal window.
Your ~/.bash_profile (~/.zprofile) and ~/.bashrc (~/.zshrc) files are used to setup your shell environment to your liking. The profile file is executed by your host operating system's login sequence when you login whereas the run-commands files (~/.*rc) are executed every time you launch a shell.
A good general rule is to set things in your profile intended to be inherited by sub-shells and applications (for example, exported environment variables) while settings not inherited (for example aliases or shell functions) but which you always want available to you, would be placed in the run-commands file.
Here's the rub... the more you do to customize your login shell (mother of all sub-shells) the more conflict you risk as the variety of things you do increases. If you set export MY_LICENSE_KEY=123 in your ~/.zprofile, that variable will be defined for every application you run and every sub-shell you launch. Maybe that's what you want or maybe that's a problem. You must decide for yourself.
That said... good automation relies upon structure and completeness so defining things at a global level (like in your login shell) tend to be counter productive to ensuring consistency between individuals or in varying contexts.
One other good principal to live by is that mutating a shell for a different purpose by removing things is generally difficult to do well and therefore not an ideal pursuit. Consider shells ephemeral. Delete them when you're done with whatever task you were doing and start the next task with a new shell.

My recommendation for Operators

Operators tend to require maximum flexibility to accomodate the numerous contexts in which commands run. Keep your login shell as vanilla as possible while making modifying your shell's environment on-demand, simple.

Define aliases in your run-commands file to easily modify your environment for specific tasks. For example, a load-brew alias could be used to add homebrew to your search path or load-clamity can source the clamity CLI into your shell.
Even something as foundational as adding a package manager to your search path might be something you want to do outside your login shell. For example, when you install macports it will add it to your search path in your login shell. Likewise, when you load homebrew it will define functions and variables in your login shell. You may want the ability to switch package managers or change the priority in your search path on a shell-by-shell (task-by-task) basis. Or you may want a shell environment that doesn't include either.
Keep your profile sparse, maybe even empty. Remember that any vars you define and export here will be visible to everyhing you do.

Here's how I handle shell setup on my mac:

% cat ~/.zprofile
export HISTCONTROL=ignorespace
export SOME_TOKEN_I_WANT_SET_IN_ALL_SHELLS="token-value-goes-here"


% cat ~/.zshrc
# Load Toolkits
function __add_to_path { echo "$PATH" | grep -q "$1" || export PATH="$PATH:$1"; }
# load clamity
alias load-clamity='source $HOME/src/clamity-toolbox/clamity/loader.sh'
# use macports packages (priority)
alias load-macports='echo "$PATH" | grep -q /opt/local/bin || export PATH="/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH"'
# use homebrew packages. Also the postgres and mysql command line utilities
alias load-homebrew='eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"; __add_to_path /opt/homebrew/opt/libpq/bin; __add_to_path /opt/homebrew/opt/mysql-client/bin'
# NVM node version manager
alias load-nvm='source /opt/local/share/nvm/init-nvm.sh; __add_to_path ./node_modules/.bin'

# Setup Development Environments
# use macports packages. Also inclues nvm and clamity.
alias load-dev-port='load-macports; load-nvm; load-clamity --quiet'
# use homebrew packages. Also inclues nvm and clamity.
alias load-dev-brew='load-homebrew; load-nvm; load-clamity --quiet'
# Use homebrew packages first, then macports packages. Also inclues nvm and clamity.
alias load-dev-1='load-homebrew; load-macports; load-nvm; load-clamity --quiet'

# Uncomment _only one_ of these if you want that environment in place for all shells.
# load-dev-1
# load dev-brew

My recommendation for Developers

Set things up like operators but call an alias in your ~/.*rc file to load the environment you always work with (uncomment only one of the last load-dev-* lines above).