using-kickstart

Using Kickstart

Kickstart is a CLI scaffolding tool that generates projects from templates. It uses Tera templating (Jinja2-inspired) and supports local directories or Git repositories as template sources.

Quick Start

# From local template
kickstart /path/to/template

# From Git repository
kickstart https://github.com/user/template-repo

# Specify output directory
kickstart template -o MyProject

# Use subdirectory within a repo (for repos with multiple templates)
kickstart https://github.com/user/repo -d templates/rust-cli

CLI Options

Option	Short	Description
--output-dir	-o	Output directory (default: current directory)
--directory	-d	Subdirectory within template/repo to use
--no-input		Use defaults without prompting
--input-file	-i	JSON file with variable values (implies --no-input)
--run-hooks		Whether to run pre/post hooks (default: true)

Non-Interactive Generation

Create a JSON file with variable values:

{
  "project_name": "my-app",
  "author": "Your Name",
  "use_docker": true
}

Then run:

kickstart template -i values.json -o output_dir

Validating Templates

Check if a template is valid before using it:

kickstart validate /path/to/template.toml

Common Workflows

Scaffold from GitHub

# Clone and scaffold in one command
kickstart https://github.com/Keats/kickstart -d examples/complex -o MyProject

Answer Questions Interactively

Just run kickstart and answer the prompts:

kickstart my-template
# ? Project name: my-app
# ? Author: Your Name
# ? Use Docker? yes

Batch Generate Multiple Projects

Create different input files and generate:

kickstart template -i project1.json -o project1
kickstart template -i project2.json -o project2

Tips

• Use --no-input when you want all defaults
• The -d flag is useful for monorepos with multiple templates
• JSON input files must have keys matching template variable names
• Values in JSON must match expected types (string, number, boolean)