cast-by-matt 0.1.0

Spin up projects in seconds — clone your own repos as templates, layer on add-ons, and land in your editor.

cast — outline

Spin up projects in seconds. Save your own repos (local or from GitHub) as templates, scaffold new projects from them, layer on add-ons like Tailwind, Supabase, or Prisma, and land straight in your editor.

Install

coming soon!

Usage

Run cast with no arguments for the interactive menu:

cast

Or use it directly:

cast init myapp nextjs      # scaffold 'myapp' from the 'nextjs' template
cast add nextjs ~/code/my-starter   # save a local directory as a template
cast list                   # list saved templates
cast info nextjs            # show a template's variables, add-ons, and docs
cast remove nextjs          # delete a template
cast starter                # install the bundled starter templates

init is fully scriptable: --var KEY=VALUE sets template variables without prompting, --addons tailwind,prisma runs add-ons, and --open launches your editor.

Works with AI coding agents

Every command runs headless, so agents like Claude Code can drive cast directly: discover templates with cast list --json, inspect a template's variables and add-ons with cast info <template> --json, then scaffold with cast init <name> <template> --var KEY=VALUE --addons .... No plugin needed — the CLI is the integration.

New here? Just run cast — on first run it offers to install two starter templates: starter, a dependency-free mini site whose README explains how templating works, and web, a minimal Vite app. Scaffold one and you've seen the whole workflow.

Templates live in ~/.project_templates. When scaffolding, files are rendered with Jinja2 ({{ project_name }} is available), git init runs automatically, and dependency installs (npm install, pip install, cargo build, …) are detected and run for you.

Template manifest (cast.json)

Optionally drop a cast.json at the root of a template to customize scaffolding. Every field is optional, and templates without a manifest work exactly as described above. The manifest itself is never copied into generated projects.

{
  // shown in the template picker and `cast list`
  "description": "Next.js 15 + App Router starter",

  // prompted at init; every value is available to Jinja, e.g. {{ db_name }}
  "variables": [
    { "name": "db_name", "prompt": "Database name", "default": "app_db" }
  ],

  "addons": {
    "recommended": ["tailwind", "shadcn"],  // pre-checked in the add-on picker
    "supported": ["tailwind", "shadcn", "prisma"]  // limits built-ins shown; omit to show all
  },

  // replaces automatic install detection (git init still always runs);
  // use [] to skip installs entirely
  "post_init": ["npm install", "cp .env.example .env"],

  // printed after scaffolding so you never hunt for docs again
  "docs": ["https://nextjs.org/docs"]
}

Without a TTY (scripts, CI), variables fall back to their defaults instead of prompting.