pdt

Run scheduled jobs — reports, integrations, automations — and deploy them to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or Windows Task Scheduler with one command.

Install

uv tool install pdt-cli

That puts a pdt command on your PATH. To update it later, run uv tool upgrade pdt-cli.

The first interactive pdt command turns on tab completion without a prompt. It works in every new terminal: Tab finishes pdt commands, their options, your app names, and example names for new --from. It supports bash, zsh, fish, and PowerShell. pdt completion [SHELL] sets up a second shell, and pdt completion --script bash prints the script instead of writing it, if you keep your own dotfiles.

You can also clone this repository and run ./pdt (or .\pdt.bat on Windows) instead. It installs uv for you if you do not have it. Both ways give you the same commands.

Set up a project

A project is a folder holding pdt.yml. Each app is a folder inside it that contains a run.py. Every command except init finds the project by looking in the current folder, then each folder above it.

pdt init my-jobs

pdt init asks where the project should live, which cloud you want, and which region. It warns you if you are about to create a project somewhere unwise, such as your home folder. The folder name is optional: pdt init with no name uses the current folder, and pdt init DIR uses DIR, creating it if it is not there yet. Add --yes to take the defaults and answer nothing.

Region is the only setting it asks for. Your AWS account, Azure subscription, and Google Cloud project all come from your credentials the first time you deploy, and pdt writes the answer into pdt.yml so every later deploy checks against it.

Starting in an empty folder also gives you a working app called hello-world. Run it straight away:

cd my-jobs
pdt run hello-world

It writes one log line and nothing else. Edit hello-world/run.py to make it do real work, or delete the folder if you would rather start from one of the examples below. A folder that already holds your own files gets no starter app.

Add an app

pdt examples
pdt new my-report --from impossible-travel-report

pdt new copies one of the examples bundled with pdt into your project. Open my-report/env.template, copy the names you need into .env, then:

pdt validate
pdt run my-report

A project ends up looking like this:

my-jobs/
  pdt.yml           settings shared by every app
  .env              secrets, never committed
  my-report/
    run.py          the job
    config.yml      schedule, settings, and the env vars it needs
    env.template

Deploy

pdt deploy my-report

The command prints a resource plan and a monthly cost estimate before it changes anything. Add --yes to skip the question. To remove everything it created:

pdt destroy my-report

To sign in again, or to switch to a different cloud account:

pdt login my-report

Commands

Command	What it does
pdt init [DIR]	create a project here, or in DIR
pdt examples	list the example apps bundled with pdt
pdt new APP --from EXAMPLE	add an app to the project
pdt list	show every app with its schedule and provider; --names prints only the enabled app names
pdt validate	check the config files and the required env vars
pdt run APP	run an app on this machine
pdt deploy APP	deploy an app to its configured platform
pdt destroy APP	remove everything deploy created
pdt secrets APP	show which .env values differ from the deployed app
pdt secrets APP save	send your .env values to the deployed app; the next run uses them
pdt secrets APP get	copy the deployed values into a .env.<provider> file
pdt secrets APP set NAME	put one value, read from stdin, into the deployed app's secrets
pdt login APP	sign in again to the app's cloud provider
`pdt storage APP ls	get
pdt az ...	run the Azure CLI that pdt installs
pdt gcloud ...	run the Google Cloud CLI that pdt installs
pdt completion [SHELL]	turn on tab completion for a shell

Leave APP off run, deploy, destroy, secrets, or login, or mistype it, and pdt lists the apps in the project so you can pick one.

pdt az and pdt gcloud hand your arguments straight to the cloud tool, and install it first if it is missing. For example, pdt az account list.

Keeping files between runs

Your app runs, writes some files, and stops. Then the computer it ran on is thrown away, and the files go with it. So pdt gives every app a folder in your cloud account that stays. Deploy the app, destroy it, deploy it again: the folder and everything in it is still there.

pdt creates one bucket per cloud account, named pdt-data- plus a short code, and gives each app its own folder inside it. When your app runs in the cloud, PDT_STORAGE_URL points at that folder. When you run pdt run APP on your own computer, it points at .pdt/storage/APP/ inside your project instead. The app code is the same in both places.

Write and read files with pdt.utils.storage:

from pdt.utils import storage

store = storage.store()
with store.open("report.csv", "wb") as f:
    f.write(b"name,count\n")

store.fs() gives you the full fsspec filesystem, rooted at your app's folder. Output from one run goes under store.run_folder(), which names a new runs/<time>-<id>/ folder each run.

Some apps need files from the last run: a Meltano bookmark, a database. Keep those in one local folder, and copy it down before the work and up after:

from pathlib import Path
from pdt.utils import storage

store = storage.store()
lease = store.pull("state/", Path(".pdt-state"))
# do the work; keep anything the next run needs inside .pdt-state/
store.push(Path(".pdt-state"), "state/", lease)

pull locks the folder, so a second copy of your app cannot run at the same time and mix up the files. push checks that nobody else changed them, saves them, and unlocks. If a run crashes, the next one takes over the lock after 30 minutes.

From your own computer, pdt storage APP ls, get, and query read the files with your own cloud sign-in. pdt storage APP destroy is the only command that deletes them, and it asks first. An app that needs none of this sets storage: false in its config.yml.

An app that is not ready sets enabled: false in its config.yml. pdt list still shows it, and every other command acts as if the app is not there. uv run run.py in the app folder still runs it.

Running pdt from CI

Every command reads its values from the environment it runs in. A build server sets them as CI variables, and no .env file is needed.

• A .env file is a convenience for a person working on their own machine. A value that is already in the environment wins over the same name in a .env file.
• PDT_ENV_JSON holds every value as one JSON object, for a CI system that keeps one secret instead of many. For example, PDT_ENV_JSON={"PDT_TOKEN": "abc", "PDT_SMTP_USER": "reports@example.com"}.
• pdt creates no .env file on a build server. It looks for the CI variable that build systems set, and for a missing terminal. Email authorization must therefore be done first: run pdt run APP once on a machine with a browser, then copy PDT_SMTP_OAUTH_CACHE_B64 (or PDT_GRAPH_MAIL_CACHE_B64 for Microsoft Graph) from your .env into the CI variables.
• pdt deploy APP and pdt destroy APP ask before they change anything. Add --yes so they proceed without asking.

Choosing where jobs run

Set platform: in pdt.yml for every app, or in an app's own config.yml for one app. An app's own file wins.

Azure

platform:
  provider: azure
  subscription: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
  region: eastus
  resource_group: pdt
  # Optional. An environment you already own, as <resource-group>/<name>.
  # environment: my-group/my-environment

subscription is optional. When it is missing or wrong, the deploy asks you to choose one.

Every pdt project in a subscription runs its jobs in one shared Container Apps environment per region, pdt-<region> in the resource group pdt-shared, because a subscription allows only a few environments. Destroying the last app that uses the environment removes it, and removes pdt-shared once it holds no environment. Set environment to use an environment you already have; pdt then never creates, changes, or deletes it.

AWS

platform:
  provider: aws
  region: us-east-1
  # Written for you on the first deploy, from your credentials.
  account: "123456789012"
  # Optional. Which profile in ~/.aws to use. Written for you if pdt has to ask.
  profile: work

profile is optional. When it is missing, pdt uses AWS_PROFILE, or the only profile on your computer. When there are several and none is chosen, or the one in the file is not on this computer, the deploy lists them and asks you to choose, then writes your answer here.

Google Cloud

platform:
  provider: google-cloud
  region: us-central1
  project: my-starter-project

project is optional. When it is missing or wrong, the deploy lists your projects and asks you to choose one, then writes your answer here.

Bringing your own Dockerfile

Every cloud provider runs a job as a container: AWS on Fargate, Azure on Container Apps Jobs, Google Cloud on Cloud Run Jobs. The deploy builds an image for each app from a generated Dockerfile. It copies the app folder and pdt.yml into /workspace, installs the script-header dependencies of run.py with uv sync --script, and runs run.py as the entrypoint.

Put a Dockerfile in the app folder to build the image your own way, for example to add system packages or to install a heavy tool at build time instead of on every run. The build context is the same as the generated one: the app folder under its own name, next to pdt.yml. Start from the generated file:

FROM ghcr.io/astral-sh/uv:python3.12-bookworm-slim
COPY . /workspace
WORKDIR /workspace/my-app
ENV PDT_PROJECT=/workspace
RUN uv sync --script run.py
ENTRYPOINT ["uv", "run", "--script", "run.py"]

A .dockerignore in the app folder keeps files out of the image. Write its patterns relative to the app folder (.meltano, output, *.csv); pdt moves them to the root of the build context for you. .env and the other secret files never reach the context, with or without a .dockerignore.

The Windows provider never builds an image, so pdt validate reports a Dockerfile in an app that uses it.

Windows Task Scheduler

platform:
  provider: windows

apps:
  - name: my-report
    timezone: local
    schedule: daily

The job runs as the SYSTEM account. Windows accepts these schedules:

• hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly
• */N * * * * minute intervals where N divides 60
• one fixed time daily
• one fixed time on selected weekdays
• one fixed time on selected days of selected months

Other cron forms are rejected, because they do not translate to Windows Task Scheduler.

The bundled examples

Run pdt examples to list them, then pdt new <name> --from <example> to copy one.

hello-world

Small app that logs "Hello world." Shows how to write a config.yml and useful as an empty starting project so you can write your own. pdt init puts a copy of this in every new empty project.

impossible-travel-report

Looks at recent Entra ID sign-ins. Sends an email when one person signs in from two far-apart places too quickly: Dallas an hour ago, Paris now.

Settings for the lookback window, the minimum distance, and the email addresses live in the app's config.yml. The env vars it needs are listed there too, and in its env.template.

monday-orphaned-account-report

Reports active Monday users whose email address does not match the userPrincipalName of an active Entra ID user.

Where things live

Item	Where
the pdt command and its code	the tool's own environment, from uv tool install
the example apps	inside the pdt package, copied out by pdt new
your apps, pdt.yml, .env	your project folder, under version control
the Google Cloud CLI pdt downloads	~/.local/share/pdt/gcloud, or %LOCALAPPDATA%\pdt\gcloud
cloud sign-in state	~/.azure and ~/.config/gcloud, as usual

Set PDT_PROJECT to name the project folder directly, instead of letting pdt search upward. Deployed jobs get it set for them.

Writing your own app

An app is a folder with a run.py that has a main() function. It declares its own dependencies in a script header, and pdt is one of them:

# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.12"
# dependencies = ["pdt-cli[apps]==0.1.2"]
# ///
from pathlib import Path

from pdt.config import check_env, load_env, merged_app
from pdt.utils.log import log


def main() -> int:
    app = merged_app(Path(__file__).resolve().parent.name)
    load_env(app["dir"])
    ...

The pinned version matters. A deployed job keeps using the version in its header, so upgrading pdt on your machine does not change a job already running in the cloud.

Utilities

pdt.utils provides built-in support for common functionality:

• Send emails
• Logging

Send Email

pdt.utils.send_email sends plain-text mail.

Supports:

• SMTP + password
• SMTP + OAuth for Microsoft or Google
• Microsoft Graph delegated Mail.Send
• SES (Amazon Simple Email Service)
• Resend

Configuration

SMTP

Required environment variables:

• PDT_SMTP_HOST
• PDT_SMTP_USER

When using password auth:

• PDT_SMTP_PASSWORD

When using OAuth for Google or Microsoft:

• PDT_SMTP_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID

Optional:

• PDT_SMTP_AUTH = oauth2
• PDT_SMTP_PORT: Port 587 is the default and uses STARTTLS; port 465 uses implicit TLS.

Google also requires:

• PDT_SMTP_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET

Microsoft optionally accepts:

• PDT_SMTP_OAUTH_TENANT_ID: Defaults to common.

PDT infers OAuth when the host is smtp.gmail.com, smtp.office365.com, or smtp-mail.outlook.com and no password is set. If a provider revokes authorization, run or deploy the app from a terminal again.

Google OAuth

Create a Desktop app OAuth client in the Google Auth Platform. Set its client ID and client secret in the variables above. The OAuth consent screen must include https://mail.google.com/ because Google requires that scope for SMTP OAuth.

Microsoft OAuth

Create an app registration in the Microsoft Entra admin center. Add a Mobile and desktop application platform with http://localhost as a redirect URI. Add the delegated Office 365 Exchange Online permission https://outlook.office.com/SMTP.Send and allow public client flows.

Microsoft 365 must also have Authenticated SMTP enabled for the sending mailbox. Use PDT_SMTP_OAUTH_TENANT_ID for a tenant-specific registration, or leave it empty to use common.

Microsoft Graph

Required environment variables:

• PDT_GRAPH_MAIL_USER
• PDT_GRAPH_MAIL_CLIENT_ID

Optional:

• PDT_GRAPH_MAIL_TENANT_ID: Defaults to common.

PDT sends as PDT_GRAPH_MAIL_USER, so email_from in config.yml must match it. Graph sends the HTML part alone; the other transports send both parts. If a provider revokes authorization, run or deploy the app from a terminal again.

Create an app registration in the Microsoft Entra admin center. Add a Mobile and desktop application platform with http://localhost as a redirect URI. Add the Microsoft Graph delegated permission Mail.Send and allow public client flows. Do not add a client secret.

SES

Required environment variables:

• PDT_SES_REGION

Optional:

• PDT_SES_ACCESS_KEY_ID
• PDT_SES_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Leave the two SES key variables empty to use the standard AWS credential chain (for example, AWS_PROFILE, environment credentials, or a workload role).

Resend

Required environment variables:

• PDT_RESEND_API_KEY

Logging

pdt.utils.log writes one log line per event:

from pdt.utils.log import die, log

log("info", "processed", rows=42)

Levels are debug, info, warning, and error. Locally a line is human-readable text on stdout; with LOG_FORMAT=json it is one JSON object per line, which is also the default on Cloud Run.