flytie 0.2.0

A CLI for managing, versioning, and exporting fly tying patterns.

flytie — Fly Tying Recipe Manager

A local-first, AI-augmented command-line tool for managing fly tying patterns. Tag and search your patterns, track every tweak with automatic versioning, generate trip-ready deduplicated shopping lists, export printable pattern cards, and ask Claude for recommendations grounded in your own library.

Everything lives in a single local SQLite file — no account, no server, and no network access unless you explicitly run flytie suggest.

What it does

• Manage patterns — add, list, view, search, tag, edit, delete, and undelete tying patterns with structured hook sizes, materials, target species, and notes.
• Version automatically — every edit creates an immutable version; list the history, diff any two versions, and restore an old one. Diffs sort materials alphabetically so reordering alone produces no noise.
• Library stats — flytie stats shows an overview, top-5 rankings, and timeline info for your library at a glance.
• Clean up materials — flytie material merge rewrites all references from one material name to another, eliminating duplicates across your entire version history.
• Plan trips — aggregate materials across any set of patterns into one deduplicated shopping list, excluding what you already own.
• Export cards — render a styled pattern card to PDF (or HTML).
• Get suggestions — flytie suggest asks the Anthropic Claude API for flies suited to a species, season, and water, grounded in your library.
• Stay portable — export and import your whole library as documented JSON.

Install

pip install flytie               # core CLI + styled HTML pattern cards
pip install "flytie[pdf]"        # + PDF export (needs the native libs below)
pip install "flytie[ai]"         # + AI suggestions
pip install "flytie[pdf,ai]"     # everything

The core install includes Jinja2, so flytie export <name> --html produces a styled, printable HTML pattern card on a bare pip install flytie — no extras, no native libraries. Any browser can open and print the resulting file. Choose the [pdf] extra only when you specifically want PDF output.

PDF export native dependencies

The [pdf] extra installs WeasyPrint, which depends on the native Pango / Cairo / GdkPixbuf libraries. These are not Python packages and must be installed at the OS level:

# macOS
brew install pango

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install libpango-1.0-0 libpangoft2-1.0-0

# Fedora / RHEL
sudo dnf install pango

# Windows
# See https://doc.courtbouillon.org/weasyprint/stable/first_steps.html

If installing the native libraries isn't an option on your platform, stick with the core install and use flytie export <name> --html for printable output.

macOS note: install Pango via Homebrew (brew install pango) before running pip install "flytie[pdf]". On some macOS + Python combinations (notably Python installed via Anaconda when Homebrew's Pango is also present), importing WeasyPrint without a matching native Pango can SIGSEGV the interpreter rather than raise a clean ImportError. Running brew install pango first avoids the binary incompatibility.

60-second example

flytie init
flytie add "Parachute Adams" --hook 14 --tag dry \
  --material "grizzly hackle,hackle,1,feather"
flytie shop --tag dry                              # deduped shopping list
flytie export "Parachute Adams" --out ~/cards/     # printable PDF card

Documentation

Full guides live in docs/:

• Quickstart — install and your first pattern
• Command reference — every command and option
• Shopping list cookbook
• AI suggestions
• Migrating from a notebook
• Export JSON schema

Every command also has built-in help: flytie <command> --help.

Project status

Current release: 0.2.0. See CHANGELOG.md for the full release history.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev,pdf,ai]"
pre-commit install --hook-type pre-commit --hook-type pre-push
pytest
ruff check src tests
mypy src

See CONTRIBUTING.md for what runs at each hook stage, how to enable pre-commit.ci, and the formatter / coverage / smoke-test contracts.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.