sprezzature-cli-gui

Turn any Python command-line tool into a clickable form, automatically. A command-line tool takes typed text ("do this, with these options") instead of buttons and fields; this package reads the tool's own definition of its commands and options and builds a web page with a button and a field for each one, so a person who has never opened a terminal can still use it.

Point this tool at a parser: the object inside a Python CLI that reads and validates the typed command. argparse (in Python's standard library), Click, and Typer are the three common ways to build one; all three are supported. Given that parser, this package emits a single self-contained page written in plain JavaScript and styled with Tailwind (a CSS framework, meaning it ships pre-made style classes instead of hand- written CSS). Every sub-command becomes a section, every flag a field. The page never runs the command itself: it assembles the exact command line as text, in the visitor's own browser, ready to copy and paste, to hand to a desktop app through a Tauri invoke call (Tauri wraps a web page as a native desktop app; invoke is how that wrapper lets the page call back into it), or to send to a FastAPI endpoint (a small Python web server) that runs it for real.

For example: a CLI with a --verbose flag and a convert INPUT OUTPUT sub-command becomes a page with a checkbox for --verbose and two text fields for INPUT and OUTPUT; filling them in and pressing "Build command" prints the exact line mytool convert in.csv out.json --verbose for the visitor to copy.

No framework, no build step: the emitted page is one static HTML file. It does load Tailwind's "Play" build from a CDN (cdn.tailwindcss.com) to turn the utility classes into real CSS in the visitor's browser, so opening the file needs an internet connection the first time; the form fields themselves still work, unstyled, without one.

Install

pip install sprezzature-cli-gui           # core (argparse)
pip install "sprezzature-cli-gui[click]"  # add Click support
pip install "sprezzature-cli-gui[typer]"  # add Typer support

Use

# From a parser factory in an importable module
sprezzature-cli-gui my_pkg.my_cli:build_parser > gui.html

# From a script path
sprezzature-cli-gui ./my_cli.py:make_parser > gui.html

When the parser cannot be imported, the tool falls back to parsing the tool's --help output, so it works even against a CLI it cannot introspect directly, including one that is not written in Python at all.

How it works

cli_to_gui.py is a thin wrapper that re-exports the real implementation, which lives in the sprezzature_cli_gui package:

• adapters/: read (introspect, meaning: examine the parser object's own fields directly, rather than guess from printed text) an argparse or Click parser; or, when no parser object is reachable, fall back to parsing the tool's --help text instead.
• schema.py: the one normalized command/flag description every adapter produces, so the renderer never needs to know which of the three frameworks it came from.
• renderer.py: turns that description into the self-contained HTML + Tailwind + plain-JavaScript page.
• loader.py: resolves a module:factory or path.py:factory spec (a string naming where the parser-building function lives) down to the actual parser object.

License

BSD-3-Clause © Warith HARCHAOUI. Part of the sprezzature toolkit.