rhiza-cradle

rhiza-cradle is a command-line tool for scaffolding new repositories from Copier templates. It keeps a registry of named templates in a local config file and wraps the full copier run-copy + GitHub bootstrap workflow into a single command.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• uv (recommended) or pip
• GitHub CLI (gh) — only required for the final gh repo create step shown in the post-create instructions

Installation

# run without installing (recommended)
uvx rhiza-cradle --help

# or install into the active environment
uv add rhiza-cradle

Usage

List available templates

rhiza-cradle list

Prints a table of all templates registered in ~/.cradle/config.yaml.

Create a project

rhiza-cradle create <template> --name <project-name> --username <github-username>

Flag	Short	Default	Description
--name	-n	(required)	Name of the new project directory
--username	-u	(required)	GitHub username / org that will own the repo
--description	-d	"A project created with Cradle CLI"	Short project description
--visibility	-v	private	GitHub visibility: private, public, or internal

Example

rhiza-cradle create package \
  --name my-library \
  --username acme-org \
  --description "Acme's core Python library" \
  --visibility public

After the template is copied, the tool prints the exact gh/git commands needed to push the new repo to GitHub.

Configuration

Templates are defined in ~/.cradle/config.yaml. The file is created automatically on first run with the following built-in templates:

templates:
  experiments:
    url: https://github.com/tschm/experiments
    description: Template for experimental projects with Marimo notebooks
  package:
    url: https://github.com/tschm/package
    description: Template for Python packages with PyPI publishing support
  paper:
    url: https://github.com/tschm/paper
    description: Template for academic papers with LaTeX support

Add your own entries using the same structure:

templates:
  my-template:
    url: https://github.com/your-org/your-template
    description: My custom template

Development

# install dependencies
make install

# run tests
make test

# lint & format
make fmt

See CONTRIBUTING.md for commit conventions, branching strategy, and pull-request guidelines.

License

MIT — Jebel Quant Research