Auto

Auto is a TypeScript-powered command-line automation tool.
Write and execute global and project-local scripts.

It's kind of like zx, but:

• TypeScript-focused
• Scripts are organized in repositories (no shebangs)
• With many goodies

Use Auto to:

• Generate files and projects
• Create interactive scripts
• Create context-aware automations

External resources:

• Generating React Components with Auto - andrei.fyi

Features

• TypeScript-powered: Write scripts with TypeScript and enjoy full type-checking support.
• Global and local scripts: Share scripts between projects or define project-specific scripts.
• Script parameters: Auto turns script parameters into interactive prompts.
• Script validation & filtering: Control the conditions for which a script is valid.
• Global utilities and helpers: Auto injects several useful packages and custom helpers as globals.
• Context awareness: Auto collects information about the project you're currently in.
• Auto-config: Prompts to create a script repo and auto-configure tsconfig.json.
• REPL: Useful REPL to explore the execution context, available globals, and scripts.

Installation

Auto is published on NPM as @andrei.fyi/auto.
If you want to get the standalone experience, with global script support, you should install it globally.
If you only want to use it inside a project, you should install it locally.

# install Auto globally
npm install -g @andrei.fyi/auto # or pnpm, yarn, or your favourite tool

# install Auto locally (and add a "auto run [script-id]" script in package.json)
npm install -D @andrei.fyi/auto

CLI Usage

You can interact with Auto's CLI by running auto in your terminal:

• auto ls - list the available scripts for the current context
• auto run <script-id> - run a script by id
• auto repl - enter the REPL

Getting started (project)

This is a quick guide of how to setup Auto in your project:

1. Install Auto as a development dependency.

   npm install -D @andrei.fyi/auto

2. Create an auto or .auto directory inside the project root.

3. Run auto ls and allow Auto to auto-configure ./auto/tsconfig.json.

4. Create a script file ./auto/hello.ts

   import "auto";
   
   export default auto({
     id: "hello",
     title: "Say Hello",
     run() {
       console.log("Hello from an Auto script!");
     },
   });

5. Run auto ls inside your project and notice how your script is listed.

6. Run auto run hello to execute the script.

Script resolution

When Auto runs, it first tries to find your scripts.

First it looks for a global script repository, a directory located at:

• ~/.config/auto on Linux
• ~/Library/Preferences/auto on macOS
• %APPDATA%\auto\Config on Windows (why are you doing this to yourself?)

Second, it tries to resolve the root of the project you may be in, based on your cwd.
To do this, it scans up the file tree until it finds a project marker pattern, or reaches the root.
If there's no match, the current directory is considered the project root.
Currently the patterns it looks for are: [package.json, go.mod, Makefile, .git]

Third, it looks for a local script repository, which is an auto or .auto directory, in the project root.

Fourth it loads all Auto scripts from both your global and local repositories.
If there is a local script that has the same id as a global script it overrides it.
If there are two scripts that share the same id, and the same locality, it panics.

Auto scripts

Check out the examples library for reference.

Auto scripts are TypeScript modules that have their default export the result of an auto(...) call.
The auto(...) function is injected at runtime by import "auto", which also imports the global types.
Both the import "auto" and export default auto(...) are required for scripts to work.

This is the skeleton of an Auto script:

import "auto";

export default auto({
  id: "my-script",
  title: "My Script",
  params: {
    myParam: {
      title: "Component Name",
      type: "string", // "string" | "number" | "boolean"
      required: true,
      // defaultValue: ({ project, params }) => string|undefined
    },
  },
  // isValid: (project) => project.hasDependency("something"),
  run: async ({ cwd, project, params, files, self, t, files, fileMap }) => {
    //          ^ contextual variables and helpers
    // instructions
  },
});

To get a better understanding how it all ties together, you can look at the type of a script:

export type Script<P extends Record<string, ParamType>> = {
  id: string;
  title?: string;
  params?: Params<P>;
  isValid?: (project: Project) => boolean;
  run: (args: {
    cwd: string;
    fileMap: Record<string, string>;
    files: { path: string; content: string }[];
    params: { [K in keyof P]: ParamValueType<P[K]> };
    project: Project;
    self: Script<P>;
    t: (text: string, params?: Record<string, string | number | boolean>) => string;
  }) => void;
};

Contextual variables and helpers

Your script's run() function is called with a dictionary that contains the following contextual variables and helpers:

• cwd: string - The directory you called auto from.
• fileMap: Proxy<{}> - proxied map that resolves the content of files, relative to the script file
  • For example, if your script is special.ts, and there is a directory interests next to it, and there's a file named rule.txt inside it, you can get its content by accessing fileMap["interests/rule.txt"].
• files: { path, content }[] - the deeply-listed list of files inside the directory the current script is in.
  • Note: the current script file will not be included in files
• params: Record<key,value> - dictionary of your script's param keys and user-provided values.
• project: Project - The current Project, a small abstraction that provides some helpers:
  • Project.isGoProject - true in a Go project
  • Project.isTypeScriptProject - true in a TypeScript project
  • Project.isJavaScriptProject - true in a JavaScript project
  • Project.isNodeProject - true in a Node.js project (shallow, checks for @types/node)
  • Project.dependencies - { name, version }[] of dependencies for Go and JS projects
  • Project.hasDependency(name, version?) - checks if the project has a dependency
  • Project.hasAnyDependency(names) - checks if the project has any of a list of dependencies (by name)
  • Project.resolvePath(...paths) - resolve a path relative to the project root
  • Project.hasPath(...paths) - resolve and check if a project-relative path exists
  • Project.hasFile(...paths) - resolve and check if a project-relative path is a file
  • Project.readFile(path) - read a project-relative file
  • Project.readJSON(path) - read a project-relative JSON file
  • Project.writeFile(path, content) - write a project-relative file
  • Project.hasDirectory(...paths) - resolve and check if a project-relative path is a directory
  • Project.createDirectory(path) - create a project-relative directory
• t(text, data?: { [key]: value }) - helper string templating function that replaces __key__ with the provided value
  • Note: If no data is provided, it uses the params dictionary.
• self: Script - the current script itself, useful for introspection ~~and meditation~~

Globals

Auto injects many helpers into the global scope.

External helpers:

• $, $$, execa, execaSync - process execution utilities provided by execa
• chalk - chalk
• fs - fs-extra
• glob - glob
• lodash - lodash
• which - which
• inquirer - @inquirer/prompts, also aliased to prompt

Internal helpers:

• sleep(milliseconds: number): Promise<void>
• shell-like helpers: cwd(), cd(), pwd

Contributing

Contributions to the Auto project are welcome!
Whether it's a bug report, a new feature, or feedback on the project, I'd love to hear from you.