wads

Modern Python project packaging and CI/CD tools for developers who want to focus on code, not configuration.

What is Wads?

Wads helps you:

Create new Python projects with modern tooling (pyproject.toml, GitHub Actions)
Manage CI/CD workflows with configuration-driven GitHub Actions
Handle system dependencies declaratively in pyproject.toml
Migrate legacy projects from setup.cfg to modern formats
Debug CI failures with automated diagnostics

Installation

pip install wads          # light core: config reading + templating engine
pip install wads[create]  # full project-creation / publishing toolchain
pip install wads[all]     # create + docs

wads ships a light core (just enough to read [tool.wads.ci] / package.json config and run the templating engine — handy in CI) plus a heavier create extra (requests, build, wheel, ruamel.yaml) for scaffolding and publishing. Use wads[create] (or wads[all]) when running populate/pack to create or publish projects.

Quick Start

Create a New Project

populate my-project --root-url https://github.com/user/my-project
cd my-project

This creates a complete project structure with:

pyproject.toml (modern build configuration)
README.md, LICENSE, .gitignore
Package directory with __init__.py
GitHub Actions CI/CD workflow (optional)

Add a frontend component for JS/TS parts (optional)

Python projects often ship a frontend component (a widget, a browser UI, a TypeScript library). populate --frontend <profile> adds a parametrized NPM CI alongside the Python one, following the same "config-file-driven, fixed-workflow" model. Pick one or more profiles:

Profile	Adds	Subdir	CI
`js`	`package.json` (npm)	`js/`	single-package `npm-ci.yml`
`ts`	`package.json` + `tsconfig.json` + `src/index.ts` (tsup build, vitest)	`ts/`	single-package `npm-ci.yml`
`ts-monorepo`	pnpm workspace root + `turbo.json` + an example `packages/core`	`ts/`	matrixed `npm-ci-monorepo.yml`

# A single TypeScript component:
populate my-project --root-url https://github.com/user/my-project --frontend ts

# Several components at once — each in its own subdir, no workflow collision:
populate my-project --root-url https://github.com/user/my-project --frontend js,ts

--with-npm is kept as a back-compat alias for --frontend js.

Each component gets:

a package.json with a namespaced "wads" config block (wads.ci.*) controlling node versions, lint/test/build commands, and publishing — analogous to [tool.wads.ci] in pyproject.toml;
a path-filtered .github/workflows/npm-ci[-<subdir>].yml stub calling wads's reusable NPM workflow (the js component keeps the bare npm-ci.yml; every other component gets npm-ci-<subdir>.yml, so multiple components never collide).

Validation runs on every push/PR; publishing is opt-in. It publishes only when wads.ci.publish.enabled is true and the commit message contains the marker [publish-npm] (deliberately distinct from the Python side). Publishing uses npm OIDC trusted publishing + provenance by default (no long-lived token). For a single component, customize the subdirectory and package name with --npm-subdir / --npm-package-name.

Package manager: npm or pnpm. The single-package reusable workflow drives npm by default and pnpm when selected — either explicitly via wads.ci.packageManager (or populate --npm-package-manager pnpm) or auto-detected from a pnpm-lock.yaml in the package directory. pnpm consumers should declare a "packageManager": "pnpm@x.y.z" field in their package.json (pnpm's own convention); the CI reads the pnpm version from there. Existing npm consumers are unaffected (no pnpm-lock.yaml → npm). The ts-monorepo profile is pnpm-based by design.

The profile set is extensible: register your own with wads.profiles.register_frontend_profile(...).

Configure CI in pyproject.toml

Edit your pyproject.toml to configure CI behavior:

[tool.wads.ci.testing]
python_versions = ["3.10", "3.12"]
pytest_args = ["-v", "--tb=short"]
coverage_enabled = true
test_on_windows = true

[tool.wads.ci.quality.ruff]
enabled = true

[tool.wads.ci.build]
sdist = true
wheel = true

# Opt-in licence gate over the installed dependency closure (default: off).
# See "Licence Perimeter" under CI Configuration Reference.
[tool.wads.licence]
enabled = false

The default ci.yml is a small stub that calls wads's reusable workflow (i2mint/wads/.github/workflows/uv-ci.yml@master); all behavior is driven by [tool.wads.ci.*] above. Publishing to PyPI happens automatically on your repo's default branch — but only when the Linux test matrix passes.

Configure Secrets (CI environment variables)

If your tests need API keys or other secrets, declare them once and let wads wire up both the GitHub Actions transport and the job environment:

wads-secrets add OPENAI_API_KEY            # env var == GitHub secret name
wads-secrets add HF_TOKEN HF_WRITE_TOKEN    # env var <- differently-named secret
wads-secrets add DATABASE_URL --kind required   # fail CI if the secret is unset
wads-secrets add TEST_LEVEL --variable      # non-sensitive value -> repo variable
wads-secrets list                           # show what's configured

wads-secrets add (a) records the variable in [tool.wads.ci.env] and (b) runs gh secret set (or gh variable set with --variable) if gh is installed (value taken from $VAR_NAME or --value). Under the hood there are two layers: a transport — the stub passes your repo's whole secrets context to the reusable workflow as one WADS_CI_SECRETS_JSON secret, so any secret name works — and an env policy ([tool.wads.ci.env] — required_envvars / test_envvars / extra_envvars / defaults / secret_aliases) that decides which values become job env vars. Each declared name resolves against secrets first, then repository variables (the right home for non-sensitive values); committed constants can go straight into [tool.wads.ci.env].defaults. A required name that resolves to nothing fails the build; an undeclared secret is never written to the environment. Note the JSON transport hands every secret the repo can read — including org-level ones — to the reusable workflow (which only exports the declared ones). If you want the workflow to receive only the names you list, use wads-migrate ci-to-stub --transport named — that mode is limited to the frozen superset in wads.ci_secrets.DEFAULT_CI_SECRETS, and is also the right choice for orgs with very large shared secrets (the serialized context must fit in one secret value). Older stubs pass secrets by name the same way; regenerate with wads-migrate ci-to-stub to switch to the JSON transport.

Declare System Dependencies

Need ffmpeg, ODBC drivers, or other system packages in CI? Declare them in pyproject.toml:

[tool.wads.ops.ffmpeg]
description = "Multimedia framework for video/audio processing"
url = "https://ffmpeg.org/"

check.linux = "which ffmpeg"
check.macos = "which ffmpeg"

install.linux = "sudo apt-get install -y ffmpeg"
install.macos = "brew install ffmpeg"
install.windows = "choco install ffmpeg -y"

note = "Required for audio processing features"

The install-system-deps action in your CI workflow will automatically install these.

Core Features

1. Project Setup (`populate`)

Create new Python projects with modern best practices:

# Basic usage
populate my-project

# With custom settings
populate my-project \
  --root-url https://github.com/myorg/my-project \
  --description "My awesome project" \
  --author "Your Name" \
  --license apache

Options:

--root-url: GitHub repository URL
--description: Project description
--author: Author name
--license: License type (mit, apache, bsd, etc.)
--keywords: Comma-separated keywords
--overwrite: Files to overwrite if they exist

Tip: Configure defaults in wads_configs.json or use WADS_CONFIGS_FILE environment variable to point to your custom config.

2. Package and Publish (`pack`)

Build and publish packages to PyPI:

# See current configuration
pack current-configs

# Increment version and publish
pack go .

# Or step-by-step
pack increment-configs-version
pack run-setup
pack twine-upload-dist

3. Migration Tools (`wads-migrate`)

Migrate legacy projects to modern format:

# Migrate setup.cfg to pyproject.toml
wads-migrate setup-to-pyproject setup.cfg -o pyproject.toml

# Migrate old CI workflow to new format
wads-migrate ci-old-to-new .github/workflows/old-ci.yml -o .github/workflows/ci.yml

Python API:

from wads.migration import migrate_setuptools_to_hatching, migrate_github_ci_old_to_new

# From setup.cfg file
pyproject_content = migrate_setuptools_to_hatching("setup.cfg")

# From setup.cfg dict
config = {"metadata": {"name": "myproject", "version": "1.0.0"}}
pyproject_content = migrate_setuptools_to_hatching(config)

# Migrate CI workflow
new_ci = migrate_github_ci_old_to_new(".github/workflows/ci.yml")

4. CI Debugging (`wads-ci-debug`)

Diagnose and fix GitHub Actions CI failures:

# Analyze latest failure
wads-ci-debug myorg/myrepo

# Analyze specific run
wads-ci-debug myorg/myrepo --run-id 1234567890

# Generate fix instructions
wads-ci-debug myorg/myrepo --fix --local-repo .

The tool will:

Fetch CI logs from GitHub
Parse test failures and errors
Identify root causes
Generate fix instructions with file locations and suggested changes

CI Configuration Reference

Wads uses pyproject.toml as a single source of truth for CI configuration. Here's what you can configure:

Install Extras

By default CI installs only your package's core dependencies. If your test suite needs an extra (e.g. a heavier create/dev group), declare it so CI installs .[extras]:

[tool.wads.ci.install]
extras = "dev"          # or a list, e.g. ["dev", "test"]

Python Versions and Testing

[tool.wads.ci.testing]
python_versions = ["3.10", "3.11", "3.12"]  # Test matrix
pytest_args = ["-v", "--tb=short"]           # Pytest arguments
coverage_enabled = true                      # Enable coverage
coverage_threshold = 80                      # Minimum coverage %
exclude_paths = ["examples", "scrap"]        # Paths to exclude
test_on_windows = true                       # Run Windows tests

Code Quality Tools

[tool.wads.ci.quality.ruff]
enabled = true
# line_length = 88

[tool.wads.ci.quality.mypy]
enabled = false
# strict = true

Custom Commands

[tool.wads.ci.commands]
pre_test = [
    "python scripts/setup_test_data.py",
]
post_test = [
    "python scripts/cleanup.py",
]

Build and Publish

[tool.wads.ci.build]
sdist = true
wheel = true

[tool.wads.ci.publish]
enabled = true  # Publish to PyPI on main/master

Licence Perimeter (`wads-licence-check`)

Fails the build when the installed dependency closure carries a licence the project's policy forbids — copyleft (GPL / AGPL / LGPL), or source-available / non-commercial (SSPL, BUSL, Elastic-2.0, RAIL, CC-BY-NC).

It walks the transitive closure, not just the declared list, because that is where the exposures actually hide, and it reads a distribution's declaration through a precision ladder — PEP 639 License-Expression, then the License :: trove classifiers, then the first line of the free-text License field. No single field is enough: click declares an expression and no classifiers, i2 declares neither and only a free-text field, and a whole-field substring scan flags BSD-3-Clause numpy as copyleft because its field carries an LGPL URL for a vendored notice.

Run it anywhere:

wads-licence-check                                    # this project
wads-licence-check path/to/project --json             # for a fleet sweep
wads-licence-check . --python .venv/bin/python        # read another env

The CI gate is opt-in. A repo that declares nothing sees no change:

[tool.wads.licence]
enabled = true                    # default false: opt in per repo
include-extras = []               # [] = hard deps only; ["*"] = every extra
unknown-is-failure = true         # a blank licence field is *unaudited*, not fine
unclassified-is-failure = false   # e.g. MPL-2.0: reported, does not fail

[tool.wads.licence.exceptions]
certifi = "MPL-2.0 — weak, file-level, over an unmodified CA bundle. Audited 2026-08."

That is the whole configuration most repos need. The allowed / forbidden pattern lists are deliberately absent from it: they REPLACE the defaults, they do not extend them, so writing them out by hand is a narrowing unless the list is a superset of what ships. If you do set them, write them as TOML literal strings — single quotes — because a basic string processes escapes and turns "\bGPL" into a backspace character followed by GPL, which matches nothing:

[tool.wads.licence]
# Start from wads.licence_check.DFLT_FORBIDDEN and ADD, rather than replacing:
forbidden = [
  '\bAGPL',
  '\bAffero\b',
  '\bGPL(?![\w.+-]*\s+with\b)',
  '\bGNU General Public\b',
  '\bLGPL',
  '\bLesser General Public\b',
  '\bLibrary General Public\b',
  '\bNethack General Public\b',
  '\bEUPL\b',
  '\bBusiness Source\b',
  '\bBUSL\b',
  '\bSSPL\b',
  '\bElastic[- ]?(2\.0|License|v2)\b',
  '(?:\b|-)(?:open)?rail(?:-m)?\b',
  '\bCC[- ]BY[- ]NC\b',
  '\bNon[- ]?Commercial\b',
  '\bProprietary\b',
  '\bYourOwnAddition\b',   # the point: ADD to the defaults, never restate a subset
]

Exceptions take either the terse map above or an array-of-tables, which is the shape to reach for when the decision needs a record behind it:

[[tool.wads.licence.exceptions]]
dependency = "PyGithub"
licence = "LGPL (classifier only; no SPDX expression published)"
scope = "core"
decided = "2026-08-30"
decided_in = "https://github.com/thorwhalen/hubcap/issues/10"
reason = """
Accepted, not removable: PyGithub's objects are this package's values, so there
is no honest "core without it" to install. Consumed by ordinary import, neither
vendored nor patched, so the LGPL relink freedom is intact.
"""

Note the table lives under [tool.wads], not [tool.wads.ci]: the policy is a fact about the package, and the tool is useful outside CI. Only enabled is a CI concern.

Exit codes are 0 (holds), 1 (breached) and 2 (the tool could not run — bad config, unreadable environment, a policy that cannot detect).

The self-check

Every run first proves the live policy still catches known-copyleft declarations and still clears known-permissive ones, and refuses to report at all if it cannot — a detector nobody has demonstrated is a detector nobody has checked.

The bar is per licence FAMILY, caught whole or not at all. Permitting a family outright is a coherent stance (LGPL for dynamically linked libraries is the usual one) and stays expressible; it is then named in every run's output, so "PERIMETER HOLDS" is never read as "there is no LGPL in here". Catching part of a family is refused, because it is never a stance — it is the bug. A gate whose LGPL pattern ended in \b caught the legacy GNU Library or Lesser classifier and missed LGPLv2, LGPLv2+, LGPLv3 and LGPLv3+, i.e. every modern spelling, while reporting itself as working.

What counts as a failure

forbidden and a blank declaration (unknown-is-failure, default on) fail, and so does a declared dependency that is not installed in the environment being read: that is a piece of the perimeter nobody looked at, and it is the same confident-green failure as reading the wrong environment. The one exception is a requirement gated on an environment marker (tomli; python_version < "3.11"), which is reported as NOT APPLICABLE and does not fail.

For the same reason the tool refuses to run at all on a project whose [project].dependencies is absent or listed in dynamic — an empty closure it could not read is not an empty closure. Write dependencies = [] if a project genuinely has none.

System Dependencies

System dependencies are declared using the [tool.wads.ops.*] format and automatically installed in CI via the install-system-deps action.

Format:

[tool.wads.ops.{package-name}]
description = "Description of the package"
url = "https://package-homepage.com"

# Check if already installed (exit code 0 = present)
check.linux = "which package-name"
check.macos = "brew list package-name"
check.windows = "where package-name"

# Install commands (string or list of strings)
install.linux = "sudo apt-get install -y package-name"
install.macos = "brew install package-name"
install.windows = "choco install package-name -y"

# Optional metadata
note = "Additional installation notes"
alternatives = ["alternative-package"]

Real-world example (ODBC drivers):

[tool.wads.ops.unixodbc]
description = "ODBC driver interface for database connectivity"
url = "https://www.unixodbc.org/"

check.linux = "dpkg -s unixodbc || rpm -q unixODBC"
check.macos = "brew list unixodbc"

install.linux = [
    "sudo apt-get update",
    "sudo apt-get install -y unixodbc unixodbc-dev"
]
install.macos = "brew install unixodbc"

note = "On Alpine: apk add unixodbc unixodbc-dev"
alternatives = ["iodbc"]

See docs/SYSTEM_DEPENDENCIES.md for comprehensive examples.

Claude Code Skills

Wads ships with Claude Code skills for AI-assisted workflows. Install them globally so they're available in every project:

wads-install-skills

This symlinks skills to ~/.claude/skills/, so they stay in sync when wads is updated:

Command	Description
`/setup-py-project`	AI-guided Python project creation: name suggestions, PyPI/GitHub availability checking, repo creation, file population
`/wads-migrate`	Migrate projects to modern wads setup (pyproject.toml + uv CI)

Example:

/setup-py-project "a tool for audio signal processing"

To list available skills without installing: wads-install-skills --list To update existing skills: wads-install-skills --force

Documentation

System Dependencies Guide - [tool.wads.ops.*] format and examples
Migration Guide - Migrate from setup.cfg to pyproject.toml
Utilities Reference - CLI tools (wads-ci-debug, wads-migrate)
CLAUDE.md - AI agent guide for working with this project

Troubleshooting

Version Tag Misalignment

If PyPI publishing fails with "appears to already exist":

WARNING  Skipping mypackage-0.1.4-py3-none-any.whl because it appears to already exist

This means your git tags are misaligned with the version in pyproject.toml.

Fix:

Check the current PyPI version: https://pypi.org/project/your-package/
Update version in pyproject.toml to a higher number
Create and push git tag:
```
git tag 0.1.5
git push origin 0.1.5
```

CI Failures

Use wads-ci-debug to analyze failures:

wads-ci-debug myorg/myrepo --fix

Common issues:

Missing system dependencies → Add to [tool.wads.ops.*]
Python version incompatibilities → Check python_versions in [tool.wads.ci.testing]
Test failures → Review generated fix instructions

Development

Running Tests

pytest wads/tests/

Building Documentation

pip install -e ".[docs]"
epythet build

License

Apache Software License 2.0

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