netimate 0.4.2

A lightweight, async-first network automation toolkit with plugin support and a rich CLI/shell interface.

Netimate

Netimate – a lightweight, async‑first network‑automation toolkit that feels as friendly as a REPL but scales like a platform.

⚠️ This project is in beta. Expect bugs, incomplete features, and breaking changes.

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Table of Contents

1. Why Netimate ?
2. Features
3. Quick Start
4. Configuration
   • Environment Variables
   • settings.yaml
5. Usage Examples
6. Architecture
7. Extending Netimate
8. Development & Testing
9. Contributing
10. Roadmap
11. License

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Why Netimate ?

Pain point 🥴	Netimate’s answer 🚀
Scripts that crawl device‑by‑device	Async SSH – run hundreds of commands in parallel
“Big‑bang” monolithic platforms	Modular plugins – bring only what you need (commands, protocols, repositories)
Separate tools for ad‑hoc tasks & CI pipelines	Unified CLI & Interactive Shell – same syntax everywhere
Manual diff reviews in Notepad	Snapshot & Diff – colour‑coded config diffs like Git
Wall‑of‑text outputs	Rich TUI – live tables & progress bars

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Features

• Async Scrapli SSH out of the box
• Plugin architecture – swap or extend protocols, device‑repositories, commands
• Interactive shell and single‑shot CLI (same binary)
• Snapshots → diff → approval workflows
• Filesystem template provider for TextFSM/TTP parsing
• Settings from YAML + runtime overrides via environment variables
• 100 % Python – import as a library, use in notebooks, or ship a single Docker image

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Quick Start

# 1 ∙ Install
pip install "netimate[full]"      # scrapli, netmiko, rich, pyyaml

# 2 ∙ Configure (minimal settings.yaml shown below)
export NETIMATE_CONFIG_PATH=$PWD/settings.yaml

# 3 ∙ Explore
netimate --shell                  # interactive REPL
# or
netimate run show-version on r1

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Configuration

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Purpose
NETIMATE_CONFIG_PATH	~/.config/netimate/settings.yaml	Explicit path to the YAML settings file.
NETIMATE_EXTRA_PLUGIN_PACKAGES	(unset)	Colon‑separated list of dotted package names to scan for third‑party plugins.

settings.yaml

device_repo: yaml               # plugin name
log_level: info                 # off | info | debug
template_paths: ["netimate.plugins.device_commands.templates"]  

# Plugin settings example. Each plugin will get the settings listed below (provided the name matches)
plugin_configs:
  yaml:
    device_file: devices.yaml   # path to inventory
  scrapli_asyncssh:
    transport_options:
      asyncssh:
         known_hosts_file: ~/user/.ssh/file.txt

• device_repo – which DeviceRepository plugin to load (yaml, postgres, etc.).
• plugin_configs – per‑plugin config blocks forwarded untouched.
• template_paths – extra directories searched by the template provider.

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Usage Examples

netimate> list devices
[r1] [r2] [r3]

netimate> run show-version on r1 r2
┌────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┐
│ Host   │ Software     │ Uptime       │
├────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
│ r1     │ 17.9(3)M     │ 35d 04:14    │
│ r2     │ 17.9(3)M     │ 22d 18:07    │
└────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┘

netimate> snapshot dev
[dev] 3 snapshots written ✓

netimate> diff-snapshots r1 2 3
─ r1_snapshot_2
+ r1_snapshot_3
+ ip address 10.0.0.2/24
- ip address 10.0.0.1/24

netimate> diagnostic site1
┌──────────────┬────────────┐
│ Check        │ Status     │
├──────────────┼────────────┤
│ CPU Stats    │ Avg 3 % ✓  │
│ Memory Stats │ 38 % ✓     │
│ Environment  │ All OK ✓   │
└──────────────┴────────────┘

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Architecture

Click to view Mermaid diagram

graph TD
    %% ─────────────── VIEW ───────────────
    subgraph View_Layer
        CLI["CLI<br/>view/cli/cli.py"]
        Shell["Interactive Shell<br/>view/shell/shell.py"]
    end

    %% ────────── COMPOSITION ────────────
    subgraph Composition
        CompRoot["composition_root<br/>netimate/composition.py"]
    end

    %% ───────── APPLICATION ─────────────
    subgraph Application_Layer
        App["Application<br/>application/application.py"]
    end

    %% ─────── CORE / PLUGIN ENGINE ──────
    subgraph Core_Plugin_Engine
        Runner["Runner<br/>core/runner.py"]
        PluginRegistry["Plugin Registry<br/>core/plugin_engine/plugin_registry.py"]
        PluginLoader["Plugin Loader<br/>core/plugin_engine/loader.py"]
        PluginRegistrar["Plugin Registrar<br/>core/plugin_engine/registrar.py"]
    end

    %% ─────────── INTERFACES ────────────
    subgraph Interfaces
        IF_Repo["DeviceRepository_IF"]
        IF_Proto["ConnectionProtocol_IF"]
        IF_Cmd["DeviceCommand_IF"]
        IF_Settings["Settings_IF"]
    end

    %% ─────────── INFRASTRUCTURE ────────
    subgraph Infrastructure
        ConfigLoader["ConfigLoader<br/>infrastructure/config_loader.py"]
        Settings["Settings<br/>infrastructure/settings.py"]
        Logger["Logging<br/>infrastructure/logging.py"]
        TemplateProvider["FileSystemTemplateProvider<br/>infrastructure/template_provider/filesystem.py"]
    end

    %% ─ CONNECTION PROTOCOL PLUG‑INS ────
    subgraph Connection_Protocol_Plugins
        NetmikoSSH["NetmikoSSHConnection"]
        NetmikoTelnet["NetmikoTelnetConnection"]
        ScrapliAsyncSSH["ScrapliAsyncSSHConnection"]
    end

    %% ─ DEVICE REPOSITORY PLUG‑INS ──────
    subgraph Device_Repository_Plugins
        YAMLRepo["YAMLRepository"]
        PostgresRepo["PostgresRepository"]
    end

    %% ───── DEVICE COMMAND PLUG‑INS ─────
    subgraph Device_Command_Plugins
        EchoTest["echo_test"]
        ShowEnv["show_environment"]
        ShowVer["show_version"]
        ShowInt["show_ip_interface_brief"]
        ShowMem["show_memory_stats"]
        ShowCPU["show_process_cpu"]
        ShowLog["show_logging"]
        ShowRunCfg["show_running_config"]
    end

    %% ───────────── MODELS ───────────────
    subgraph Models
        DeviceModel["Device<br/>models/device.py"]
    end

    %% ──────────── DATA FLOW ─────────────
    CLI --> CompRoot
    Shell --> CompRoot

    CompRoot --> App
    CompRoot --> Logger

    App --> Runner
    App --> IF_Repo
    App --> IF_Proto
    App --> IF_Cmd
    App --> IF_Settings
    App --> TemplateProvider

    Runner --> PluginRegistry
    PluginRegistry --> PluginLoader
    PluginRegistry --> PluginRegistrar

    IF_Repo --> YAMLRepo
    IF_Repo --> PostgresRepo

    IF_Proto --> NetmikoSSH
    IF_Proto --> NetmikoTelnet
    IF_Proto --> ScrapliAsyncSSH

    IF_Cmd --> EchoTest
    IF_Cmd --> ShowEnv
    IF_Cmd --> ShowVer
    IF_Cmd --> ShowInt
    IF_Cmd --> ShowMem
    IF_Cmd --> ShowCPU
    IF_Cmd --> ShowLog
    IF_Cmd --> ShowRunCfg

    IF_Settings --> Settings
    Settings --> ConfigLoader

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Extending Netimate

Write a new Device Command plugin

# my_plugins/show_cdp_neighbors.py
from netimate.interfaces.plugin.device_command import DeviceCommand

class ShowCdpNeighbors(DeviceCommand):
    table_headers = ["NEIGHBOR", "LOCAL_IF", "REMOTE_IF"]

    def template_file(self) -> str:
        return "ios/cisco_ios_show_cdp_neighbours.textfsm"

    @staticmethod
    def plugin_name() -> str:
        return "show-cdp-neighbors"

    def command_string(self):
        return "show cdp neighbors detail"

    def parse(self, raw: str):
        # convert raw TextFSM record list into rows matching table_headers
        ...

export PYTHONPATH=$PWD/my_plugins
export NETIMATE_EXTRA_PLUGIN_PACKAGES=my_plugins
netimate run show-cdp-neighbors on r1

Other plugin types

• ConnectionProtocol – SSH, Telnet, RESTCONF, etc.
• DeviceRepository – YAML, CMDB, IPAM, Postgres…
  See /plugins/* for working examples.

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Development & Testing

git clone https://github.com/sjdigiovanni/netimate.git
cd netimate
make setup          # install dev requirements
make ci             # black, isort, mypy, pytest

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Contributing

Pull requests are welcome! Discussions and RFCs live in the Discussions tab.

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Roadmap

• Multi‑protocol auto‑discovery & topology graph export
• NETCONF / RESTCONF support
• Web UI (FastAPI + WebSockets)

Track progress on the projects board.

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License

Netimate is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 – see LICENSE for details.