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CLI Template

Overview

A modern CLI template with pre-configured tools, best practices, and CI/CD setup for rapid project development.

Features

  • Yargs — command routing, option parsing, auto-completion, and env-var binding
  • Inquirer — interactive prompts (select, confirm, autocomplete, search)
  • Conf — persistent user preferences with JSON-schema validation
  • Winston — structured file logging (error, warn, info, verbose, debug)
  • Chalk — terminal colour output
  • Ora — spinner for long-running tasks
  • dotenv — .env file support with a configurable namespace prefix
  • update-notifier — nudges users to upgrade when a new version is published

Installation

Terminal window
npm install --global @theholocron/cli-template

Usage

Terminal window
cli-template --help


# Run a built-in command
cli-template log


# Enable debug output for a single run
cli-template log --debug


# Or set it persistently via env
CLI_TEMPLATE_DEBUG=true cli-template log

Environment Variables

Copy .env.example to .env. The CLI_TEMPLATE prefix is the project namespace — replace it consistently when building on this template.

Variable Default Description
CLI_TEMPLATE_DEBUG false Enable debug output
CLI_TEMPLATE_SOUND false Enable sound effects
CLI_TEMPLATE_VERBOSE false Enable verbose logging

Project Structure

src/
├── cli.ts          # yargs entry point and global options
├── const.ts        # shared path/OS constants
├── commands/       # one file per sub-command
│   ├── conf.ts     # persistent config management
│   └── log.ts      # example logging command
├── ui/
│   ├── prompts/    # select, confirm, autocomplete, search
│   └── open/       # open URLs or files in the default app
└── utils/
    ├── config/     # conf wrapper and preferences schema
    ├── env/        # dotenv reader/writer
    ├── log/        # winston logger + chalk helpers
    └── string.ts   # string utilities