Start a new web application on the lacodda line's stack with one command - one stack assembled to the end, and a repository ready to work in from the first commit.

What it is

lyrn new creates a repository that is ready to work in: Vite, React, TypeScript, Tailwind and the dowel design system, together with the things a project usually grows only after the third time somebody wishes it had them — a CI gate, a changelog, an ADR directory, an editor config, a license.

It is not a scaffolder for any framework you like. It is one stack, assembled to the end. The choice a generator usually hands back to you has already been made, and made the same way for every product on the line.

A day in the life

$ lyrn new demo-app --accent kilna --yes
Created 30 files in `demo-app`.
Installing dependencies... done
Starting the repository... done
Staging the first commit... done
Creating the first commit... done

Next:
  cd demo-app
  pnpm dev

$ cd demo-app && pnpm lint
> eslint . && tsc --noEmit && pnpm registry && pnpm test

registry: 1 copy matches dowel-ui 0.33.0
 Test Files  2 passed (2)
      Tests  3 passed (3)

That gate is the same one CI runs, so a green terminal means a green pull request.

Install

$ npm install -g lyrn          # or: cargo install lyrn

Usage

$ lyrn new <name> [options]      # a project in a directory of its own
$ lyrn init [path] [options]     # the same, in a directory that already exists
$ lyrn adopt [path]              # the standard's missing files, into an old repository
$ lyrn forms

| Option | What it does | | --- | --- | | --form <form> | The shape of the project (default: spa) | | --host <host> | The application a plugin extends; --form plugin only | | --accent <colour> | A product of the line, or a #rrggbb value | | --description <text> | One line describing what the project is | | --author <name> | Recorded in LICENSE; defaults to git config user.name | | --path <path> | Where to create it; --form docs adds to the current directory | | --repo <owner/name> | The GitHub repository it will live in | | --with <addon,...> | Optional pieces of the form, comma-separated | | -y, --yes | Accept the defaults instead of asking | | --dry-run | Show the tree that would be written, and write nothing | | --no-hooks | Skip installing dependencies and starting the repository |

Without --yes and with a terminal attached, lyrn asks for what it is missing. Without a terminal — in CI, in a script — it takes the defaults and never blocks waiting for an answer.

The accent

A generated project states one thing about its own appearance, and the theme derives the rest — the hover shade, the soft fill, the focus ring, the tint the greys carry, and what colour text has to be on an accent fill:

:root {
  --accent-base: #d9569e;
}

--accent takes either a colour or the name of a product on the line, in which case its mark's colour is used.

Forms

| Form | What it produces | | --- | --- | | spa | Single-page app: Vite, React, TypeScript, Tailwind, dowel | | cli | Command-line tool: Rust, clap, anyhow, dialoguer | | desktop | Desktop app: Tauri 2 around the spa stack | | service | HTTP service: axum, sqlx, Postgres | | workspace | Cargo workspace: a library crate plus the CLI that uses it | | mono | pnpm monorepo publishing a TypeScript package to npm | | plugin | Plugin for a host of the line: an executable speaking JSON over stdio | | tauri-plugin | Tauri 2 plugin: a Rust crate and the npm package that calls it | | docs | Documentation site added to an existing repository: Starlight, llms.txt |

A form can carry optional pieces. The line's four CLIs agree on clap, anyhow and dialoguer and disagree about everything else, so the rest is asked for:

$ lyrn new my-tool --form cli --with keyring,self-update

lyrn forms lists them under each form: keyring and self-update for the CLIs, i18n for the desktop, router, tanstack-query, auth and pwa for the spa, a web UI and a demo for the service. Each is what the line's products already do, and none is generated unless asked for — a project should not carry code it never calls. What each one writes: Forms.

--form workspace is the cli form with its logic in a library crate of its own: crates/<name>-core publishes to crates.io beside the binary, so another program can call the logic without taking the command line with it.

--form mono is a pnpm workspace publishing a TypeScript package from packages/<name>: the shape dowel, kjui and lyrnui all take. It is built with tsc rather than a bundler, and CI installs the packed tarball elsewhere and imports it with a plain node — the only check that catches a package which builds and cannot be imported. --with stand adds a page where it runs.

--form plugin writes a plugin for an application of the line: an ordinary executable that answers --manifest with what it offers and run with an invocation on stdin. --host names the application, and there is no default — the host decides the protocol the plugin declares, so a guess would produce a plugin nothing runs. The generated project carries a test that runs the binary exactly as the host does.

--form tauri-plugin writes both halves of a Tauri 2 plugin, the crate and the npm package, from one repository and under one tag. They agree on three spellings, and a disagreement is a permission error in somebody else's application rather than a build failure here — so CI holds them to each other.

--form docs is the one form that adds to a repository instead of starting one: run inside it, it writes a Starlight site under docs/ and the workflow that publishes it, and refuses outright if any of those files already exists. Every build also writes llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown twin of each page, and fails when the site disagrees with itself about its own address.

More forms — egui — follow in 2.x.

Status

v2.8.0, in daily use. All nine forms and their add-ons work today, each generated and put through its own gate on Linux, macOS and Windows on every push, and lyrn adopt brings an older repository up to the same standard. What landed in each version: CHANGELOG.

Migrating from 1.x

Version 1 wrapped webpack and generated its configuration. That job belongs to Vite now, and the wrapper is gone: lyrn create, start, build and export no longer exist. An existing 1.x project keeps working — pin [email protected], or move to Vite directly, which is what the 1.x templates were producing configuration for anyway.

License

MIT (c) Kirill Lakhtachev