mise

mise (pronounced "meez", as in mise-en-place) is a command-line tool that prepares your development environment before every command runs. It combines three things developers usually juggle with separate tools: installing and switching dev tool versions, loading per-project environment variables, and running build/test/deploy tasks. It's aimed at developers and teams who want one config file (mise.toml) instead of a .nvmrc, a .env file, a Makefile, and a version manager per language, all doing overlapping jobs differently.

It works as a replacement for tools like asdf, nvm, pyenv, rbenv, and direnv, and it also functions as a lightweight task runner similar to make or just. Because it hooks into your shell, activating a directory automatically switches tool versions and loads environment variables, without shims pointing to wrapper scripts.

Key features

• Dev tool management: install and switch between versions of node, python, go, terraform, cmake, and hundreds of other tools listed in mise's registry, all from one CLI.
• No shims by default: mise activate puts real tool paths on your PATH, so which node resolves to the actual binary instead of a shim script.
• Per-directory environment variables: define vars in mise.toml or load them from .env files, scoped to a project directory and applied automatically when you cd in.
• Task runner: define tasks with run commands, descriptions, and depends chains directly in mise.toml, then execute them with mise run <task>.
• One-off tool execution: run a command against a specific tool version without installing it globally using mise exec <tool>@<version> -- <command>.
• Shell activation for multiple shells: works with bash, zsh, fish, and PowerShell via a single mise activate hook line.
• CI-friendly setup: the same mise.toml that developers use locally can be installed with mise install in CI, keeping local and CI environments consistent.

Ideal use cases

• Teams that want a single config file to pin tool versions (node, python, terraform, etc.) instead of maintaining separate version-manager config files for each language.
• Projects that need environment variables scoped per directory, such as different AWS profiles or Terraform workspaces for dev vs. staging checkouts.
• Repos that want lightweight, declarative tasks (build, lint, deploy) without pulling in a full build system, especially when tasks need to depends on each other.
• CI pipelines that should mirror local dev environments exactly, since mise install reads the same mise.toml used on developer machines.
• Polyglot projects (e.g., a repo mixing Go, Terraform, and AWS CLI) where juggling asdf, direnv, and a Makefile separately becomes tedious.

It's less of a fit if you only ever work with a single language and already have a stable, minimal setup with a dedicated version manager you're happy with, since introducing another tool adds a small migration cost for little gain. It's also not a general-purpose build system like Make or Bazel; task dependency graphs are simple (depends), not a full DAG-based build engine.

Installation

Install with the official install script:

$ curl https://mise.run | sh
$ ~/.local/bin/mise --version

Hook mise into your shell so it activates per directory (pick the line for your shell):

echo 'eval "$(~/.local/bin/mise activate bash)"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(~/.local/bin/mise activate zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc
echo '~/.local/bin/mise activate fish | source' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish
echo '~/.local/bin/mise activate pwsh | Out-String | Invoke-Expression' >> ~/.config/powershell/Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

Install tools globally or per project:

$ mise use --global node@26 go@1

Run a command against a specific version without installing globally:

$ mise exec node@26 -- node -v

Define env vars and tasks in mise.toml, then apply and run them:

[env]
SOME_VAR = "foo"

[tasks.build]
description = "build the project"
run = "echo building..."

$ mise install
$ mise run build

Also installable via crates.io (cargo install mise) since it's published as a Rust crate. See the getting-started guide on the docs site for platform-specific package manager options.