readmegen

readmegen is an AI-powered CLI tool that generates comprehensive README.md files for any local repository. It analyzes your project structure, dependencies, and source code to produce documentation in seconds.

npm install -g readme-generator-ai

Features

• 🤖 Multi-provider AI — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, GitHub Copilot. Auto-detects your API key.
• 📦 Offline mode — --no-ai generates a full template from config files and source scanning.
• 📁 Universal parser — package.json, requirements.txt, Cargo.toml, pyproject.toml, Gemfile.
• 🔍 Source scanner — Extracts exports from JS/TS, Python, Rust files.
• 🌳 File tree — Auto-generated ASCII tree of your project structure.
• 🎨 Beautiful TUI — Colored terminal output with progress spinners and summary box.
• 🔄 Cross-platform — Windows, macOS, Linux.

Usage

readmegen [path] [options]

| Argument | Description | |----------|-------------| | path | Project directory (default: .) |

| Option | Description | |--------|-------------| | --no-ai | Skip AI, use templates only | | -o, --output <file> | Output file (default: ./README.md) | | --overwrite | Overwrite existing file | | --provider <name> | AI provider: openai, anthropic, google, github-copilot | | --model <name> | Model name (provider-specific default) | | -h, --help | Show help |

Examples

# Generate with auto-detected AI provider
readmegen

# Generate for a specific project
readmegen ../my-project

# Template-only mode (no API key needed)
readmegen --no-ai

# Write to a custom location
readmegen -o docs/README.md --overwrite

# Use a specific provider and model
readmegen --provider google --model gemini-2.5-flash

API Keys

Set one of these environment variables — readmegen auto-detects which is available:

| Provider | Variable | |----------|----------| | Google Gemini | GOOGLE_API_KEY | | OpenAI | OPENAI_API_KEY | | Anthropic | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | | GitHub Copilot | GITHUB_TOKEN |

What It Generates

┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  readmegen complete                        │
│                                            │
│    ✔ Parse config files                    │
│    ✔ Scan source files                     │
│    ✔ Generate file tree                    │
│    ✔ AI description (Gemini 2.5 Flash)     │
│    ✔ Write README file                     │
│                                            │
│  📄 ./README.md                            │
│  ⚡ 2.3s                                    │
│  🤖 google                                 │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The output includes: project description, installation, usage, API reference (auto-detected exports), scripts table, file tree, dependencies, troubleshooting, contributing, license.

Offline Mode

With --no-ai, readmegen works entirely offline by parsing your project's config files and scanning source code for exports. No API key required.

readmegen --no-ai

Supported Languages

| Language | Config Parsing | Source Scanning | |----------|---------------|-----------------| | JavaScript / TypeScript | package.json | ✅ Exports | | Python | requirements.txt, pyproject.toml | ✅ Functions/classes | | Rust | Cargo.toml | ✅ pub fn, pub struct | | Ruby | Gemfile | — |

Web Demo

Try it online at readmegen-web-demo.vercel.app — paste any GitHub URL to generate a README via the GitHub API.

License

MIT

README generated by readmegen