When managing a large number of systems, centralized configuration management (CCM) and describing all systems in metadata is imperative. One of the major hurdles in using a CCM, besides finding one that is useful and useable, is that configuration management radically changes the workflow of sysadmins: instead of directly changing settings on affected systems, settings need to be changed on the central configuration server and then deployed to the systems. This talk focuses on cft, the configuration file tracker, a tool that records the changes an admin makes on a system and helps to integrate them into the central configuration store, thereby providing a much more natural workflow for sysadmins. In a way, cft is sabayon for system administrators. Cft lets sysadmins (or developers in the case of appliances) configure systems in exactly the same way they do now (using vi, yum,system-config-*) while giving them the benefits of centrally managed configurations, and clear records of changes made to a system in the form of reusable metadata.