cli-maker

A tool to automatically generate CLIs from a folder of command scripts.

Installation

npm install -g @mckinleymedia/cli-maker

Usage

cli-maker <name> [options]

Options

• -c, --commands <path> - Path to commands directory (default: ./commands)
• -t, --typescript - Generate TypeScript CLI (default: false)
• -h, --help - Show help
• -V, --version - Show version

Example

# Generate a CLI called "mycli" from the example-commands folder
cli-maker mycli -c ./example-commands

# The CLI is immediately ready to use!
mycli --help
mycli hello World

How it works

1. Command Discovery: cli-maker scans your commands directory for scripts (.sh, .js, .ts, .py)
2. Description Extraction: It extracts descriptions from comments in your scripts (format: # Description: Your description here)
3. CLI Generation: Creates a fully functional Node.js CLI with:
   • Command routing
   • Interactive mode with arrow key navigation
   • Colored output
   • Automatic argument detection
   • Help menu
   • Support for multiple script types
4. Automatic Installation: The CLI is installed globally with no manual steps required

Command Script Format

Your command scripts should include a description comment:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Description: This is what my command does

# Your script logic here
echo "Hello from my command!"

Generated CLI Features

The generated CLI includes:

• Direct command execution: mycli <command> [args]
• Interactive mode: Just run mycli without arguments
  • Arrow key navigation
  • Colored command list
  • Automatic argument prompting for commands that need them
• Help menu: mycli --help
• Automatic script type detection (bash, node, ts-node, python3)
• Smart argument detection - knows which commands accept arguments

License

MIT