aygaoua-readme-generator

A smart CLI tool that generates professional README.md files by auto-detecting project info from package.json and git config — so you answer fewer questions.

✨ What's New in v1.6

• 🎨 Colorful CLI — Styled banner, colored output, and animated spinner
• 📋 Template Selection — Choose Minimal, Standard, or Detailed README styles
• 😎 Emoji Headers — Optional emoji prefixes on section headings
• 👀 Inline Preview — See your README before it's written to disk
• 📜 More Licenses — ISC, MPL-2.0, LGPL-2.1, Unlicense added

Features

• Auto-detection — Reads your package.json and git config to pre-fill project name, license, GitHub username, email, install & test commands.
• 3 README templates — Minimal (clean & concise), Standard (balanced), Detailed (full-featured with Features, Roadmap, Acknowledgments).
• Emoji section headers — Optionally prefix headings with thematic emoji (🚀 Installation, 📜 License, etc.).
• Inline preview — Previews the first 20 lines of your README in the terminal before writing.
• Input validation — Ensures required fields are filled and emails are valid.
• Overwrite protection — Warns before replacing an existing file.
• Custom output filename — Choose any .md filename you want.
• License badges — Automatically adds a shields.io badge matching your license.
• Dynamic sections — Skips the Tests section if no test command is detected.
• Animated spinner — Smooth loading animation while generating.
• Colored output — Beautiful chalk-powered CLI experience.

Installation

npm install -g aygaoua-readme-generator

Or run it directly with npx:

npx aygaoua-readme-generator

Usage

Navigate to the root of your project (where package.json lives) and run:

readme-gen

The tool will:

1. Show a styled banner.
2. Auto-detect project info from package.json and git config.
3. Display what it found in a colored summary.
4. Ask only the questions it couldn't answer automatically.
5. Let you pick a template (Minimal / Standard / Detailed) and toggle emoji headers.
6. Show an inline preview of the generated markdown.
7. Generate a polished README.md (or any filename you choose) with a spinner animation.

CLI Options

| Flag | Description | | ----------------- | --------------------------- | | -h, --help | Show help message | | -v, --version | Show version number | | --no-preview | Skip the inline preview |

Templates

| Template | Description | | ---------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ | | 📋 Standard | Balanced — Title, badges, TOC, Install, Usage, License, Contributing, Tests, Questions | | 📄 Minimal | Clean & concise — Title, badges, blockquote description, Install, Usage, License, Contributing, Tests, Questions | | 📚 Detailed | Full-featured — Everything in Standard + Features, Roadmap, Acknowledgments |

Example Output

The generated README includes these sections (depending on template):

• Title with license badge
• Description (blockquote in Minimal, heading in Standard/Detailed)
• Features (Detailed only)
• Table of Contents (Standard + Detailed)
• Installation (with code block)
• Usage
• License
• Contributing
• Tests (with code block, if applicable)
• Questions (with email + GitHub link)
• Roadmap (Detailed only)
• Acknowledgments (Detailed only)

Supported Licenses

MIT · Apache-2.0 · GPL-3.0 · BSD-3-Clause · ISC · MPL-2.0 · LGPL-2.1 · Unlicense · None

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license.

Contributing

1. Fork this repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/my-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add my feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/my-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Questions

For questions or issues, open an issue on GitHub.