It's not hard. It's just boring. And repeatable tedium is exactly what scripting is for.

So I built WorkStation Builder which is a PowerShell tool that takes a fresh Windows install from "nothing" to "fully loaded" with one command and a GUI. I've been using it for my own machines for a while, cleaned it up, and it now lives at wsb.chrisbmn.com.

What it actually does

Drop this into an elevated PowerShell window:

irm "https://cbmn.link/wsb" | iex

That command pulls the script, bootstraps Chocolatey and winget (if they're not already there), installs a baseline for your machine, patches, reboots, then picks up where it left off and then opens a WPF GUI where you pick what you want to install. Nothing is pre-selected - you're in control of every checkbox. When you're done, it installs everything in order, routing each tool to the right package manager automatically.

If you already have a machine set up and just want to add a few tools, there's a shortcut for that too:

irm "https://cbmn.link/launchgui" | iex

That skips the bootstrap step and goes straight to the menu. Useful when a colleague asks you to "just grab a few things" and you don't want to run the whole setup process on their already-configured machine.

The catalog

Right now WSB has 98 tools across 13 categories. Here's the breakdown:

• Shell & Terminal: Windows Terminal, PowerShell 7, Oh My Posh, Scoop
• Browsers: Arc, Brave, Chrome, Firefox, Firefox Developer Edition, LibreWolf, Vivaldi
• Dev Tools: VS Code, Git, GitHub Desktop, WinMerge, Node, Python, Terraform, kubectl, Helm, lazygit, jq, yq, Zed, bat, ripgrep, and a handful of other CLI utilities I reached for constantly
• Productivity: 1Password, Notepad++, 7-Zip, PowerToys, Snipaste, Kleopatra, Thunderbird, and a few others
• Media & Graphics: VLC, Paint.NET, GIMP, Inkscape, K-Lite Codec Pack
• File Management: WinSCP, FileZilla, WizTree
• Admin & Security Tools: SysInternals, IIS Crypto, OpenSSL, LockHunter, Rufus, LGPO, Windows Admin Center
• Network Tools: MobaXterm, PuTTY, Nmap, Wireshark, PortQryUI
• Azure & Cloud Tools: Azure CLI, Azure Storage Explorer, Azure Data Studio
• Virtualization & Remote: RVTools
• AI Tools: ChatGPT, Claude
• PowerShell Modules: Az, Microsoft.Graph, Exchange Online Management, Posh-SSH, PSWindowsUpdate
• Windows Features: 22 individual RSAT tools (Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Group Policy, Failover Clustering, WSUS, and more), plus a bulk "Install All RSAT" option if you just want everything

The full catalog with descriptions is on the WSB page - each tool shows which package manager installs it and any relevant notes.

Package managers are handled for you

One of the things that used to drive me insane about manual setup was jumping between package managers. Some tools are on winget, some are better from Chocolatey, CLI utilities belong in Scoop, PowerShell modules come from PSGallery, and RSAT tools are Windows Features. WSB handles all of that behind the scenes. You pick the tool, it figures out how to get it.

• winget: Microsoft's official package manager. Does the heavy lifting for most apps.
• Chocolatey: Bootstrapped automatically. Used when winget doesn't have a package or Chocolatey has a more reliable version.
• Scoop: Opt-in from the GUI. No admin required, no registry clutter. It's perfect for CLI tools like jq and yq.
• PSGallery: PowerShell modules straight from Microsoft's official gallery.
• Windows Features: DISM/Add-WindowsCapability for the RSAT tools. No third-party involved.

Still a work in progress

WSB does what it says on the tin right now - install. That's it. No uninstall, no upgrade, no "what's out of date." Those are on the list. 

The two things I want to add next are removal (pick tools to uninstall, same GUI experience) and upgrades (run WSB against an existing machine, see what's out of date, update what you want). The plumbing for both is pretty straightforward - the hard part is making the UI not terrible for those flows, which is its own project.

So if you run it today and think "wait, where's the uninstall button" - that's intentional, not an oversight. It's just not there yet. (It's also not something I'm going to rush and ship half-finished. I've learned that lesson enough times.)

It's open source

The whole thing is on GitHub at chrisbmin/wsb-base. The tool catalog lives in config/tools.ps1 — adding or removing a tool is literally one line. If your toolkit looks different than mine (and it probably does), fork it and make it yours. That was kind of the point.

I built this to solve my own problem, but it's been useful enough that I figured it was worth sharing. If a fresh install is in your future — new machine, rebuild after a bad update, whatever the occasion — give it a shot.

Elevated PowerShell. One command. Come out the other side with a real workstation.