Copilot

Copilot is a cross‑platform project scaffolding CLI similar to Cookiecutter, now with a TUI‑based interactive flow and a JSON manifest.

Key Features

• TUI interactive prompts that adapt to variable types: text, boolean, number, and choices.
• Cookiecutter‑style replacements using MiniJinja for both file content and file/folder names.
• Template manifest in copilot.json (similar to cookiecutter.json).
• Supports _copy_without_render to skip Jinja rendering using shell-style glob patterns.
• Lua hooks system: detect hooks/ and run pre_prompt.lua, pre_gen_project.lua, post_gen_project.lua.
• Works with local template folders and Git repositories.

Install

cargo install --path .

Usage

Basic usage with a local template folder:

copilot <source> --output <dir>

• source: Path to a local template directory, or a Git URL.
• --output: Destination directory. Defaults to the current directory.

Examples:

• Local template: copilot templates/copilot_sample_template --output ./out
• Current directory output: copilot templates/copilot_sample_template
• Git template: copilot https://github.com/<user>/<repo>.git --output ./out

When run in a terminal, the tool presents a TUI and automatically chooses the best input component for each variable:

• String → text input
• Boolean → checkbox (y/n)
• Number → numeric input
• Array → choices (dropdown/select)
• Object → nested JSON input (recursively prompted)

If the environment is not a TTY (e.g., during automated tests), Copilot falls back to reading answers from standard input line by line. Hit Enter to accept defaults.

Template Manifest: copilot.json

Your template folder must include a copilot.json at its root. It defines variables and optional _copy_without_render paths.

Example:

{
  "project_name": "Hello World",
  "project_slug": "hello_world",
  "author": "Alice",
  "private": false,
  "retries": 3,
  "license": ["MIT", "Apache-2.0", "GPL-3.0"],
  "_copy_without_render": ["tests/**"]
}

Rendering Rules

• Both file contents and path segments are rendered with MiniJinja.
• Registered templates support include/import across the template folder.
• Paths matching _copy_without_render glob patterns are copied without Jinja rendering.

Example Template Structure

templates/copilot_sample_template/
├── copilot.json
├── README.md
├── hooks/
└── {{ project_slug }}/
├── hooks/
│   ├── pre_prompt.lua
│   ├── pre_gen_project.lua
│   └── post_gen_project.lua

Development

Build:

cargo build

Run tests (includes an end‑to‑end interactive test that feeds stdin):

cargo test

Internationalization Note

This project’s documentation and CLI messages are provided in English for consistency across platforms.

• Hooks
  • Copilot auto-detects hooks/ and executes Lua scripts if present.
  • pre_prompt.lua: runs before prompting. Return { vars = { ... } } to override defaults.
  • pre_gen_project.lua: runs before rendering. Return { files = [{ path, content }, ...] } to create files.
  • post_gen_project.lua: runs after rendering. Return { files = [...] } to add post-generation artifacts.
  • Available globals in Lua: vars (table of current values), ctx (table with stage, output).